28th Parliament · 1st Session
The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Sir Magnus Cormack) took the chair at 3 p.m., and read prayers.
page 797
– Mr President, I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move:
That there be referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Health and Welfare the following matter:
Rehabilitation services for the disadvantaged (handicapped), including the total requirements necessary for the optimum provision of these services, particularly in the educational, medical, social and vocational aspects of rehabilitation, and having regard to:
the overlapping and gaps in the existing services,
the integration of rehabilitation services into compensation legislation,
training and teaching staff (educational medical, social and vocational) in rehabilitation and rehabilitation techniques, and
the need to recommend provision for total care of the disadvantaged, taking into account their return, where possible to (a) full employment, and (b) the home, and, where (a) and (b) are not achievable, to either sheltered employment or full nursing care.
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- Senator Withers, yesterday you gave notice of a motion. Do you wish to continue with it now?
– I was waiting for you to call on questions, Sir, before I rose. Pursuant to the contingent notice of motion I gave yesterday, I move:
I would like to speak briefly to the motion. The Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Murphy) and I have tried to work out an arrangement across the table that as soon as Senator Greenwood has spoken, if the Senate agrees that he ought to speak, the debate on Senator Murphy’s statement be called on forthwith, but I do not think we have had time yet to work out the appropriate procedure.
– If the motion is carried it will have a curious result. On Tuesday of last week I made a statement on Croatian terrorism and moved a motion. The Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Withers) partly replied and then obtained leave to continue his remarks. If the motion were carried, instead of proceeding with that matter, Senator Greenwood would make some statement, the matter would end there, presumably other business would be proceeded with and the debate would not be continued. We would regard that as an unsatisfactory state of affairs. We are willing to facilitate the procedure, if the Opposition wants it, of not proceeding to questions and the other normal business today but to proceed with the substantial matter. We are anxious that the substantial matter of Croatian terrorism be debated.
If it is desired that Senator Greenwood commence now, instead of Senator Withers continuing with his remarks, we will be happy for that course to be taken by leave of the Senate. We would let SenatorGreenwood commence and at a subsequent stage we would let Senator Withers continue his remarks; but for orderly debate and observance of the proprieties we think that the debate on my statement should be resumed; that is item No. 9 under Government Business. Let Senator Greenwood make his statement and then let the debate proceed and others reply to what is put by Senator Greenwood. The Leader of the Opposition and I have discussed the matter. I suggest that instead of spending the time of the Senate in discussing this procedural matter, this would be an appropriate course to be taken. I see that Senator Withers is indicating agreement with what I have said.
– There would be an understanding that Senator Greenwood would receive an extension of time to enable him to finish his statement?
– Yes. May I ask for leave to propose, if the Senate generally concurs, that the course to be taken is that the matter concerning Croatian terrorism in Australia come on now, that Senator Greenwood be given unlimited time to speak in the matter, that the debate then proceed and that
Senator Withers be entitled to speak in the debate, in effect, as though he had not yet spoken.
– I would be agreeable to that course if all other honourable senators agree.
– What does Senator Drake-Brockman say on the matter?
– I am glad that we have been brought into it. On behalf of the Australian Country Party, I agree.
– Would Senator Gair indicate whether he concurs with the proposal?
– I would hate to disturb the harmony that appears to exist. I have no objection to that procedure.
– On behalf of myself and the independent senators, I state that we agree.
– May it be taken that by general concurrence this will be the course of the proceedings?
– Is there any objection? There being no objection, leave is granted for this course to be followed.
Motion - by leave - withdrawn.
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Debate resumed from 27 March (vide page 547), on motion by Senator Murphy:
That the Senate take note of the statement.
– The Attorney-General (Senator Murphy) said last week that he would inform the Senate and the people of Australia of the facts - the facts of organised Croatian terrorism in Australia. He has not done so. What he has done has been to choose his target, select his facts and give those chosen by him and those only to the Senate and to the nation. What he has done in the name of the truth has been to accuse some, to judge some, to vilify some, and to deceive all the people of Australia. He has done this by concealing the truth; not by exposing it. If the facts did not support his beliefs, then he ignored and suppressed those facts. What he has done has disgraced his office. As the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth he claimed to be giving the facts on a serious matter of whether or not there are terrorist activities and terrorist organisations in this country. But he has ignored what is relevant, concealed what is inconvenient and refused to table all the documents which would enable people to find out where the truth lies. The truth has not been told and the reason that the truth has not been told has been because the AttorneyGeneral has chosen not to do so.
He stated that there are terrorist organisations in Australia. He has named certain organisations. But who are their members, what are their activities, what have they done? What is there to justify his claim? Where is the substantiation? Where indeed, is the credible evidence? What does the AttorneyGeneral say? He says that the evidence is in the documents that he piles on the table of the Senate - some 2,000 or more pages of documents. For what purpose? Is it to allow the assumption to be made: ‘Well, if there are 2,000 pages there must be something’? But he does not identify what he relies on as evidence. Above all else, he has refused to prosecute anybody or any organisation for any criminal activity of any kind. Nor has he said that he will prosecute - if indeed, in the prejudiced atmosphere he has created, any person he has named could expect a fair trial before a jury.
Senator Murphy claims that there is overwhelming evidence, incontestable evidence, of his allegation of terrorist organisations in this country. There are laws - in the Commonwealth Crimes Act - under which he can prosecute persons and apply to the courts to declare such organisations to be unlawful. Persons who cause death, injury and terror by exploding bombs are terrorists and liable to the full rigours of our criminal law. It is not only persons who commit the crimes but persons who conspire to commit crimes or who attempt to commit crimes who can be prosecuted. The laws exist, the offences exist, the determination to stamp out political terrorism is asserted - and yet there are no applications to the courts. It is inconceivable that if there is evidence of organised terrorism there should be no prosecutions. And, naturally what we are concerned about are not prosecutions of individuals following police raids and arrests since the Attorney-General made his statement last week. We are concerned to challenge and deny the Attorney-General’s assertions that last year the evidence was available in abundance to support prosecutions. Why, if the evidence is there, have there been no prosecutions? No reason ia given. The fact is - it must be - that there is no evidence which would enable prosecutions. There is no credible evidence to support the allegations. This is what the Commonwealth Police, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Attorney-General’s Department of the Commonwealth confirmed to me and what the documents the AttorneyGeneral concealed and the facts he withheld plainly disclose.
The Attorney-General had an abundance of material available to him. What he chose not to reveal is revealing. I have a document, received from ASIO last year and dated 13th April 1972, which Senator Murphy has available to him and which he has not tabled. And what does it say? It expressed, in 11 closely argued pages, that it is difficult not to believe that the majority of violent incidents involving Yugoslavs in Australia: - it they are indeed the work of Croatian nationalists - must also be the result of activity by isolated individuals or very small groups. Certainly the incidents themselves have been of a type not requiring organisational support, but rather, limited ingenuity on the behalf of an individual to obtain explosives and construct a simple detonating mechanism.
Did Senator Murphy refer to this statement? Did he table this document? He did not. The document concluded: that while there were grounds for presuming that the Croatian nationalist organisations as entities are unlikely to be involved in such violence in Australia, a more probable explanation lies in the activities of individuals and small groups acting independently without organisational support.
I shall table the document and I challenge the Attorney-General. Why did he not table it? Why did he make no reference to its conclusions?
Senator Murphy denied that there was basis for my assessment that there was no credible evidence of the existence in Australia of Croatian revolutionary terrorist organisations. He said that at the time I made those statements they were untrue. But what are the facts? What was the statement I had made? I had said on 20th July 1972:
Investigations by the Commonwealth Police so far have not revealed any credible evidence that any Croatian revolutionary terrorist organisation exists in Australia. The Government cannot positively reject assertions that individuals or groups of individuals may be engaging in terrorist activities directed in some way to achieving Croatian independence.
Allegations of such activities and other matters are frequently brought to the notice of the police and these are subject to continuous investigation. If investigations disclose such activities, the persons so engaged will be prosecuted if their activities are in breach of the law.
This statement, which Senator Murphy describes in effect as a lie, I made as AttorneyGeneral. I made it responsibly. It is not a lie, in fact or in effect. I made it after consideration of the recommendations, the factual material, the reports and the relevant information which had been supplied to me. The responsibility for the statement naturally is and must be mine, but it was made as a considered statement of the position as I and the agencies of the Commonwealth for whom I was responsible knew it.
A further document from ASIO, undated, which Senator Murphy did not table, was an initial assessment after the bomb explosions which occurred in Melbourne in April 1972 and which I received about that time. The document stated: .
However, even if it can be shown that within the Croatian nationalist organisations there are some individuals with a propensity to violence this would provide insufficient grounds for general condemnation of the organisations when . there is no evidence to indicate that bomb attacks are other than the violent expressions of individual extremists.
If requested I shall table the document. These assessments are entirely consistent witht he view that is to be found in the documents, which Senator Murphy was prepared to table, of what was said in 1971.
I note, for example, from those tabled documents, that on 2nd February, 1971 the Director-General of Security stated:
It should be understood that, so far, evidence is lacking that any of the bomb attacks on Yugoslav establishments have been planned by specific organisations, rather than by individual extremists. The detection of individuals, or small isolated groups, is obviously a more difficult matter than the penetration of established organisations.
I note also that at the conference attended on 20th February 1971 to deal with co-operation between the Commonwealth Police and ASIO the Commissioner of Commonwealth Police reported to the Secretary of the AttorneyGeneral’s Department that the recent acts of violence were discussed and that: the indications were that Croatians were involved but whether this was as the result of activity and control by Croat organisations was not clear.
It was also said that:
It is obvious that the ASIO and the Commonwealth Police assessments of 1971 still remained the same in 1972. Why did the Attorney-General not table those documents I received in 1972? They do not support his elaborate thesis but why should they not be revealed?
Senator Murphy claimed that there was an irresponsible indifference to information available, but he makes this charge only on the basis of that information which he regards as relevant for the Senate and the people of Australia to have. It may be clever politics but it is unworthy of the principal law officer of the Commonwealth. I was consistently receiving submissions from the Police, from ASIO and from the Attorney-General’s Department on the whole question of terrorism. Senator Murphy referred to the aide-memoire from the Yugoslav Government and the allegations about the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood. But, again, what are the facts? I received a departmental submission on 18th August 1972 which stated:
The reports by ASIO to the Department of Foreign Affairs dated 24th March 1970 and to this Department dated 15th August 1972 both indicate that, in ASIO’s view and that of ‘the relevant law enforcement agencies’ no evidence has been found to support the Yugoslav contention of 1970 that the groups gathered round the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood were still in existence in this country, and were operating on a scale comparable with pre- 1963 activities.
If requested I shall table this document. Will the Attorney-General say why he declined to put this material before the Senate and the people of Australia?
The aide-memoire contained numerous allegations. Persistent among the allegations in the document were the assertions that terrorist training by terrorist groups was taking place in Australia. Senator Murphy claimed that what he called a bland interim reply was given on 20th October to the Yugoslav Government which maintained that the matter was still being investigated but made no admission of the presence of terrorist organisations in our midst. It was this which, subsequently, the Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) has stigmatised as a lie.
But how could the reply say anything else in the light of the facts? Senator Murphy chose to withhold the facts. What are the facts? All the detailed aide-memoire allegations were being investigated. Searches of homes had taken place. I was constantly being informed that documents seized - and nothing other than documents had been found by the Commonwealth Police in these searches - were awaiting translation. I would be kept informed. But the final report apparently was not available until 23rd November - by which time, because of the dissolution of Parliament, I had ceased to receive any reports or submissions from the Commonwealth Police. One of the last Commonwealth Police documents I received was a submission from the Commissioner of Commonwealth Police dated 19th October 1972. It said:
From time to time, allegations have been made by both the Yugoslav Government and various groups in Australia that clandestine training is being given to Croatian ‘terrorists’ in this country prior to their returning to Europe to carry out guerilla activity against the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). All such allegations have been scrupulously investigated but to date no viable evidence at all has been uncovered to support the contention that Croatian terrorists have been trained in Australia.
I shall table this document. Surely this is highly relevant. It was the day before the reply was given to the Yugoslav Government. Why did not Senator Murphy choose to make this information available? The Commonwealth Police had reported to the Attorney-General’s Department on 17th August 1972. At that stage they had before them the aide-memoire which had been presented by the Yugoslav Ambassador on 16th August. Senator Murphy has placed reliance upon this aide-memoire and drawn certain conclusions from it. But his conclusions are based on the same tactic, of selecting what he wants and ignoring what is to the contrary or is inconvenient, as characterises his whole statement.
What are the facts? What are the matters Senator Murphy withholds? First he refers extensively to the police report of 23rd November which he has tabled and which represented, apparently, the final conclusions of the Commonwealth Police. It is a document never produced to me and he would know this. And yet he attempts to build a case on the assumption that it was material known to and in the hands of the previous Government. Second, he tables the Commonwealth Police report dated 17th August 1972 which, of course, was stated by the police to be a preliminary study. He refers to one sentence only - that it, namely the aide-memoire, does contain a core of almost irrebuttable fact.
But what was the core of irrebuttable fact? The Commonwealth police did not expressly say what that core of irrebuttable fact con- sisted of. Nor does Senator Murphy. I shall refer to what it might be at a later stage. Third, what the report did say was:
For the first time we have been given clear evidence that the Yugoslav authorities have been making a detailed study of leading Croatian nationalist figures in Australia and that they may well be in possession of credible evidence which would support their allegations. Whilst we would disagree at this juncture with some specific aspects of their claims, particularly in relation to the links between HRB and H1RO, basically they seem to have evidence pointing towards the existence of a Croatian terrorist organisation in Australia.
The evidence referred to consisted of what was alleged by the Yugoslav Government. It had to be tested by investigation. As the report said, they may well be in possession of credible evidence which would support their allegations. The report expressed serious concern on what the material in the aidememoire contained about the possible existence of a clandestine terrorist organisation in Australia.
It is proper and only fair to consider what the 5 pages of the police report of 17th August indicated. What was the core of irrebuttable fact? Surely it was, as a study of the report discloses, that there had been a raid, an unlawful incursion, by persons intending violence, into Yugoslavia. Some of these persons came from Australia. They had links with Australia. The report stated:
Attacks have taken place on Yugoslav missions without detection of the culprits.
That is fact - irrebuttable fact - but in the light of the many reservations and qualifications the report contains it is difficult to see what other irrebuttable fact, relating to Australia, is referred to. As I have indicated, Senator Murphy did not specify what it referred to.
But the balance of the report, which was tabled in the Senate, on a day subsequent to the making of Senator Murphy’s statement, indicates that, until investigations were made, the claims of the Yugoslav Government could not be the subject of more than initial comment. For example, the report says: ‘We are not in a position to comment on the veracity of all the claims’. That was relating to allegations of Australian involvement in organisation and training of terrorist groups. It says: ‘Until detailed substantiating evidence is provided’. That was relating to individuals’ alleged involvement in particular acts. The report states: ‘This Force has been unable to obtain evidence to support a prosecution of either the movement’ - Croatian National Resistance - ‘or Rover’. It also states: ‘We are not yet in possession of evidence’, to support alleged assessments of individuals. Further the report says: ‘The names and premises . . . are the subject of current investigation’. Then it says: ‘We are unable to obtain any credible evidence to support these allegations’. They related to training and terrorist groups. The report also states: ‘Police have been unable to obtain formal complaints from witnesses who would testify in Court’. That was referring to allegations of apparent extortion. Finally, it states: ‘Our investigations failed to produce credible evidence to support such claims’. That was relating to claims of blackmail with respect to the purchase of so-called Croatian passports.
These are, as I have indicated, the statements to be found in the police report of 17th August. These statements are highly relevant but were not even referred to by Senator Murphy. They represent the state of police investigation and their assessment of the position before they proceeded to make the detailed inquiry into the Yugoslav Government’s allegations in the aide-memoire.
They represent the considered police viewpoint at about the same time as I made the statement which Senator Murphy categorised as a lie. I had said that investigations by the Commonwealth police so far had not revealed credible evidence that any Croatian revolutionary terrorist organisation existed in Australia. But there was no denial. There was a willingness and preparedness to investigate all allegations. And this, as the police report indicates, as the departmental submission supports and as the various ASIO reports confirm, was the position at that time.
And I reiterate again: Why, if the AttorneyGeneral was concerned to present the facts, was no mention whatsoever made of these specific matters? The Attorney-General also revealed his partisanship and limited presentation of the material available to him when he chose to quote part, and part only, of the initial ASIO assessment of the aidememoire. I refer to the ASIO document of 7th September 1972 which he has tabled. What he did not refer to was the part of the ASIO report immediately preceding the passage which he quoted. What he omitted was as follows:
Until such time as inquiries in Australia and overseas have been completed it is difficult to provide any useful assessment of the aide memoire. In general terms, it would appear that none of the material provided would be of any great value as evidence in a legal sense, but rather that it consists of a series of allegations requiring investigation.
He committed the cardinal sin of quoting out of context. The police report concluded by stating that a detailed list of specific questions was being prepared for clarification by the Yugoslav authorities. And the ASIO report indicated that inquiries had been instituted in an effort to establish the international links, the nature of organisational support, the origins of the initiation and planning of the Bosnian raid and the location of any possible military training. Yet when all the police searches, the investigations, the interrogations and the inquiries and translations of seized documents had been completed what did the police report? They reported - and as I have said, because of the dissolution of Parliament, it was not a report which came to me - that the allegations of a secret terrorist organisation must be continued to be taken seriously. And this, of course, was no more and no less than what they had said in August.
All allegations of terrorism and terrorist organisations must be taken seriously. And they were taken seriously. What was available was the allegation. But to say that X or the X organisation is terrorist is not proof that he or it is - any more than to say that X is a murderer is to establish that he is. And what I have said is a fundamental aspect of our civil liberties. We value certain rights as part of our free society. And one of them is that a person accused of a crime is obliged to be and is entitled to be tried in a court, under due process of law, and not to be judged criminal simply on the assertion of a policeman, a foreign government or an AttorneyGeneral. Arising out of the many allegations in the aide-memoire the final police report of 23rd November recommended only that one Jure Marie was implicated with an unidentified Croatian nationalist organisation which the report stated ‘apparently existed in Australia and which has been engaged in an attempt to overthrow the recognised Government of Yugoslavia’. There was no credible evidence of the other allegations, and no prosecutions eventuated.
The police reports taken together reveal the facts and they present a vastly different picture from that which was presented by the Attorney-General. But there is one aspect of this whole question of Croatian terrorism to which Senator Murphy did not refer. It is a significant omission. The Commissioner of the Commonwealth Police in his report of 17th August 1972- that was one of the tabled documents - described it as one of a number of disturbing aspects. Maybe the susceptibilities of the Attorney-General were offended when he learned that there was a police suspicion of one or more Yugoslav agents provocateurs. What was omitted from his statement was the police comment on the aide-memoire assertions of the existence of a secret terrorist organisation HIRO. In respect of this a prosecution for possession of explosives was and is still to be heard in Victoria. I quote from the report of 17th August:
There are a number of disturbing aspects, particularly in relation to one of the 4 allied conspirators, Ivan Mudrinic. This force has received information from a number of sources that Mudrinic was in the pay of the Yugoslav Consulate-General, Melbourne. This gives rise to the suspicion that he played the role of agent provocateur in the matter of the Warburton explosives cache and, in fact, possibly in relation to the constitutional documents of HIRO. These documents appear to be almost a text book example of prima facie evidence of illegal associations under section 30 of the Commonwealth Crimes Act.
It is difficult at this juncture’ to see any viable reason why the Bosnian incident group would be carrying such documents, which in view of their apparent lack of relevance to anywhere except Australia, would be an unnecessary burden. It is possible that the Yugoslav authorities .may have obtained copies through Mudrinic or possible other informants in Australia. In view of the pending trial of Mudrinic et al, any enquiries which might overtly suggest an agent provocateur would prejudice the Crown case. The matter is therefore the subject of discreet inquiry.
I repeat that Senator Murphy did not refer to this allegation. Why? Surely it is relevant in any assessment of whether the allegations of Croatian nationalist organisations being terrorist organisations are justified. Surely it raises questions as to whether the sweeping condemnation of the Croatian migrant community is justified. The real point about this matter is whether the organisation known as HIRO exists. If it does, has any part been played by the Yugoslav authorities themselves in respect of its creation or existence? Obviously the police have their suspicion.
The suspicion to which the police report gave expression is certainly a view held by a number of Croatians. These allegations of agents provocateurs, of which I readily concede there was no credible evidence to enable action to be taken, were made by a number of members of the Croatian community who passed on their views to me last year. Certainly there are Croatians who regard their troubles in Australia as having been fomented by Yugoslav secret police in Australia. The Attorney-General would be aware of these allegations. He would also be aware of the ASIO appreciations, of worldwide assessment made by other nations’ agencies, and the information possessed and suspicions held by the Commonwealth Police. And yet he has not referred to any part of this in his statement. He ought to have been frank with the Senate and the Australian people.
The Attorney-General has not tabled a number of documents which raise, as they ought to raise in the mind of any scrupulous Attorney-General, the questions of whether or not there are agents provocateurs in Australia and whether they have been involved in any of the incidents attributed to Croatian terrorists. I received an ASIO appreciation shortly after 29tb August 1972 in which reference was made to the activity of the Yugoslav intelligence service in Australia in an effort to penetrate and fragment emigre organisations and to sow distrust so that the Croatian emigres would be unable or unwilling to act as a cohesive anti-regime body. Reference was also made to the beliefs held in emigre and security intelligence circles as to the techniques which have been used by the Yugoslav authorities and the anticipation as to the actions which might be expected in this country by Yugoslav authorities. It was stressed that no hard evidence was held to support these beliefs. This is a document available to the Attorney-General. It would be unreasonable to suppose he has not seen it. He did not table it. Again I challenge the Attorney-General to say why he chose to ignore its implications.
Another document not tabled deals more specifically with the alleged implication of the Yugoslav Consulate with the as yet unheard trial relating to the cache of explosives and documents discovered in the Warburton Ranges. I specify the document as a letter to the Secretary of the AttorneyGeneral’s Department dated 29th August 1972. 1 do not say anything more about the contents of the document because it purports to relate conversations with named persons employed by the Yugoslav Government. But Senator Murphy knows the gravity and the relevance of the information it contains. Yet he did not take it into account in any way in his state- ment. Is it because it supports the allegation of an agent provocateur to which the Commonwealth Police referred in their report of 17th August?
I consider it my duty, as the AttorneyGeneral has not done, to raise the question as to the extent to which Croatian nationalists are properly to be regarded as suspects in a number of unresolved incidents. I say, without making any conclusion on the matter, that these allegations ought to have been placed alongside all the other allegations and assertions which Senator Murphy made in his statement. If he says he is proposing to give the facts he should give all the facts and not only some of them. What the Australian people are looking for is not only the truth but the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and an Attorney-General should aid them and not hinder and mislead them in that quest.
I turn now to the claim that the Sydney bombings of 16th September 1972 highlighted the question of Croatian terrorism. Why? It may be that these bombings were the work of politically motivated Croatians. It may be that they were the work of Croatians not politically motivated. They may have been the work of any Australian, immigrant or otherwise, who had some criminal objective to pursue or, they may have been the action of an agent provocateur. We do not know.
That it was terrorist in character is unquestioned. But no-one has been charged and police investigations have still not revealed material upon which a prosecution may be made. The ASIO in an assessment dated 19th September 1972 expressed the view that there was nothing to link the 2 bomb explosions and a hijacking of a Swedish plane which occurred on the previous day to any investigations of Croatian terrorist activities. They expressly left open the possibility that some form of organisation may yet prove to exist. I shall table the assessment I received from ASIO - a document available to Senator Murphy which again he did not table. I challenge him to say why this document was not tabled.
The distortions I have pointed to in Senator Murphy’s statement are founded on a comparison of what Senator Murphy said and the material he had available to him and to which he either gave no weight or which he declined to disclose in any way. His statements and the allegations he founds upon those statements are not only improperly based, they are dishonestly presented. It is a biased and selective presentation of facts. The AttorneyGeneral has misled the Senate and the people of Australia by making a statement, tabling documents and ignoring and concealing material which may exculpate those whom he traduces. This is injustice and when the weight of parliamentary privilege is also placed on the scales against the persons who are traduced the justification on him who does it is so much the greater. But what injustice is caused if the persons who are vilified and convicted by parliamentary accusation are not even aware - let alone able to have access to - documents, information and material which, if it may not declare them innocent, raises that reasonable doubt which is the cornerstone of our criminal law.
Is it too weak to describe Senator Murphy’s conduct as inexcusable? It is, surely, the more reprehensible when, in addition to tabling documents containing rumour, suspicion and unverified allegation, he permits a roving expedition to the media and the public to print and say what they please - with absolute privilege concerning the individuals named in the parliamentary documents. It is a denial of fundamental human values which this country has long cherished - and for which, I hope, the lack of challenge over so many years has not weakened our firm desire to sustain.
Senator Murphy’s statement is a monumental misrepresentation. He accuses the former Government - and its predecessors - of defeatism and lack of initiative. Nothing is further from the truth. And Senator Murphy knows from the records available to him what the truth is. Yet he denies it by his refusal to acknowledge what occurred. He conceals it by withholding from the Senate documents of undoubted relevance. He knows - but he did not acknowledge it - that the pattern of police investigations, of ASIO intelligence assessments and an active pursuing of all leads and information was maintained at all times. Everything the police heard was investigated. Everything I heard or received was investigated. Newspaper stories were investigated, journalists were interviewed and, from the information obtained, what was able to be investigated was investigated. I detail, for example, what I said on 20th July 1972 in the major Press release which, as AttorneyGeneral I issued that day - and thereafter I held a Press conference when questions could be asked of me and answered. I said, in full and frank detail:
Commonwealth Police have investigated allegations reported by the Australian Broadcasting Commission concerning the use of premises at the rear of a shop in Shannon Avenue, Geelong and that Croatian men and youths met in Geelong and proceeded to different parts of the You Yang mountains for training. There is no evidence to support the claim that groups of more than 30 men met in the shop or slept in the shed in the backyard of a house behind the shop. Both the Victoria Police and the Commonwealth Police are satisfied these allegations are not true. Other allegations reported have been investigated and no evidence to support them has been found.
Specifically -
Press reports that a woman said that Yugoslavs often spent weekends at a You Yangs farmhouse have not been borne out by investigation.
Reports of shooting noises and gunfire in the area are explainable by the fact that, there is a rifle range in the area used by the reputable Australian Sporting Shooters Association.
The local President of the Shooters Association has stated that the presence of 40 or moTe men on the You Yang rifle range was common and had no connection with political matters. The Association has conducted both day and night firing exercises for the last 14 years.
Local police in the area have reported that no complaints relating to ‘groups of armed migrants’ have ever been received by them.
Local inquiries have elicited that no military training of the type alleged in a newspaper report could have possibly been carried out in the You Yangs area without it becoming a matter of public knowledge. The You Yangs are a highly popular recreation area used by sporting bodies and the general public. It is also used for motor sports including car trials and rallies, some of which are conducted after dark.’
It is apparent that inquiries conducted by the Commonwealth police and the Victoria police have produced the same result. There is no evidence to substantiate reports and allegations’ of Croatian military training activities in the You Yang area.
This is not the mark of irresponsible indifference. It is the mark of concern and willingness to test every allegation that is made. Senator Murphy must know, because the material is available to him, of the detailed investigations which occurred. And yet he chose to ignore them. I had stressed many times in many places in 1972 the strongest denunciation of terrorism of any description. Violence of any kind is to be deplored. And I knew that, in what I said, I had the full support of my colleagues in government. I had constantly reiterated the Government’s position. If there are groups in this country engaged in training for terrorist or subversive activities - to be carried out either in this country or overseas - they would not be tolerated. As far as the Government was able it would put a stop to them. And numerous steps were taken, apart from requiring and ensuring that police and other investigations were maintained.
Senator Murphy must know, for the documents he tabled reveal it, that the earlier surveillance and other lawful activities of the Commonwealth police and other police forces were effective - so effective that the organisation known as the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood virtually disbanded and ceased to exist by 1967. One organisation reasonably suspected in those days of possible complicity in or preparedness to assist acts of violence against the Yugoslav Government therefore ceased to be a cause for concern. And this is what all the subsequent assessments of the Commonwealth agencies confirm. Whether, as police reports of 23rd November 1972 received by Senator Murphy after he became Attorney-General suggest, the body has been revived is for Senator Murphy to determine. But if he has evidence he has an obligation to take action.
Senator Murphy knows, or ought to know, that in conjunction with the Department of Foreign Affairs an interdepartmental committee to consider existing legislation and practice in Australia in the detection and countering of terrorist activities was established, lt was to consider, as I indicated to Mr Bowen as Foreign Minister in a letter of 16th October 1972,. a conspectus of Commonwealth and State and territorial laws having a bearing on terrorist activities - not only with a view to ascertaining whether Australian law was adequate to deal with terrorism, but also to ascertain what changes would be required to give effect to any new international treaties an<T obligations. Senator Murphy must know, because it was public knowledge and the material is available to him, of the efforts which the Government made to persuade the United Nations General Assembly to take a strong and positive stand against terrorism throughout the world.
Senator Murphy must know because the Attorney General’s Department has the material which I asked to be prepared, of the summary of laws throughout Australia relating to the storing and acquisition of gelignite. It is an area of concern and action ought to be taken to ensure that these laws are as strin gent as practicable. He should know, if he has inquired, that this was a matter on which I had requested the Attorney-General’s Department to prepare a submission for my consideration as a uniform laws project to be presented to the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General. Naturally, this is a matter falling within State responsibilities. Senator Murphy should know of the work of the Central Crime Intelligence Bureau and its special interest in criminal activities within migrant communities. He knows or should know of steps initiated to review the effectiveness of the Commonwealth Police Force. He should know of steps taken to improve liaison between police forces.
I have mentioned these matters because they refute the portrayal of apathy and disinterest which Senator Murphy so selectively sought to create. Senator Murphy has claimed that ASIO described the attitude of my predecessor Mr Hughes and, thereafter, Mr N. H. Bowen and myself, as indifferent to the problem of Croatian terrorism. This, for my part and on the part of my predecessors I entirely repudiate. The statement emanating from ASIO, which Senator Murphy declared subsequently by an answer to a question to have come from the Director-General himself, is a curious self-serving statement. Its significance would not be lost on the Attorney-General. Yet it was not associated with the same strength, priority or vehemence of expression which has characterised the other condemnations in his statement. Are we to believe that a man who has never previously complained, now, in the extraordinary atmosphere which the Attorney-General by his raid on ASIO has created, suddenly discovers an indifference in the former Attorneys-General?
For my part, I had numerous conferences and discussions with the Director-General of Security. Senator Murphy should have known, for the information must be available to him, that on 27th September I summoned a conference of the Director-General of Security, the Commissioner of Commonwealth Police and senior officers of the Attorney-General’s Department to consider amongst other things more effective means of liaison, investigation and dissemination of intelligence relating to allegations and counter-allegations of Yugoslav terrorism. The document which I shall table indicates not a picture of indifference but a concern to ensure, as the document states, that the Attorney-General was in the best possible position to provide the Prime Minister and Cabinet with assessments of intelligence relating to terrorist activities in Australia. The document, which is a submission by the Secretary of the AttorneyGeneral’s Department approved by me on 6th October 1972, states:
The purpose of this minute is to seek your formal approval to the arrangements agreed on at the discussion you had with Mr Barbour and myself on 27th September last for a group to be established to co-ordinate intelligence and investigations relating to politically motivated acts of violence.
The co-ordination group is to consist of a senior officer of this Department who will be in charge of the group, a senior officer of the Commonwealth Police Force and a senior officer of ASIO.
After setting out the functions of the group the document records:
In accordance with your requirements the group will make frequent and regular reports on at least a daily basis to yourself.
If the Director-General of Security is accurately reported by the Attorney-General, he has a curious idea of ‘indifference’. The group was established for one reason, and that reason was that as a Government we were not prepared to tolerate violence or terrorism and any step to further our determination was worth while. I shall also table, an earlier document, being a memorandum to me by the Secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department headed ‘Yugoslav Migrant Problems and Related Matters’ dated 29th August 1972, concerning the need for a thorough appraisal to be made of troubles in the Yugoslav community in Australia and for improving liaison between the various Commonwealth agencies. The memorandum I table was in response to initiatives which I had taken and I refer to them only to establish that, if Senator Murphy had wished to do so, he could have acknowledged them himself. It was from this appraisal and subsequent consideration that the co-ordinating group on politically motivated acts of violence was eventually established in the AttorneyGeneral’s Department.
But these are all matters to which Senator Murphy makes no reference. The documents were available to him but were excluded. They demonstrate, as almost all of what I have said today demonstrates, that the vilification in which Senator Murphy has engaged was derived from a highly selective, partisan and completely misleading collection of facts. There are also matters alleged by
Senator Murphy, which I mention only because they were specific and ought to be answered. They also are the results of slanted and selective presentation of material. He states, for example, that, on 19th September, I had claimed in the Senate that the allegations of the President and Prime Minister of Yugoslavia had been proved as allegations without basis. He contends that this was contrary to the ‘core of almost irrebuttable fact’ which was an expression contained in the preliminary assessment by the Commonwealth Police of the Yugoslav Government’s aidememoire. But what he omits and it is the fact, is that the debate in the Senate was about statements which had been made by President and Prime Minister prior to the aide-memoire being received. These statements were part of the subject matter of Senator Murphy’s motion which was being debated. And the Commonwealth Police report of 17th August had confirmed that these broad allegations were without basis - as subsequently the allegations in the aidememoire about specific bases and training camps were said to lack viable evidence.
But the quotations and imputations which Senator Murphy chose to make are contrived to create a different impression from what the record shows. And this, of course, appears to be the quite deliberate pattern of what Senator Murphy said. Senator Murphy accused me of being an active protector of terrorists. It is a charge unsupported by evidence and absolutely unwarranted. It derives from the letter I forwarded to the Minister for Immigration which last week was incorporated in Hansard. To that letter I then and now fully adhere. Zdenko Marincic was a convicted person. That he was a person who must be taken either to have been prepared to engage in violence overseas or to support the violent acts of others I plainly acknowledged. But he had committed no act of violence in Australia and in my opinion, to deport a person to such a country where he will be persecuted for his political opposition to the Government of that country is not my concept of how an Australian Government should act - or of how the Australian people would expect it to act. I do not know how any Attorney-General with a sense of justice and a respect for human values could have taken a different view.
Further, I categorically deny the imputation that I caused an officer of the
Attorney-General’s Department to be relieved of his duties because of some supposed refusal to accept bis advice. If he was relieved, and 1 do not know that he was, it was an internal decision of the Department. It was not mine. In any event the officer whom I identify as the one allegedly relieved was communicating with my office, as my records reveal, on Croatian matters at the end of October. Senator Murphy must know the facts - but he has chosen again, not to state them but to leave the matter open for innuendo and assumption. I also say, to illustrate the character of the case sought to be made, that the opinion I expressed as Attorney-General on the question of the grant of a passport to Jure Maric, which was in any event refused, by the responsible Minister, namely the Minister for Immigration, was not included in the tabled documents. I retained my copy of my notation on the 3- page submission dated 6th July, wherein I expressed my views and acknowledged completely that the decision was for the Minister for Immigration. Why the departmental ly noted copy of a 2-page submission dated 4th July and never presented to me was tabled I am unable to say.
In conclusion I say that Senator Murphy’s statement should never have been made. It was made in a highly charged atmosphere of unprecedented acts - of raids on security headquarters by Commonwealth Police, of intensive house searches, of massive security precautions. In this atmosphere, charges have been made contrary to the usual processes to which we are accustomed and a whole migrant community is virtually accused of guilt - because every Croatian-born citizen tends to be regarded as a potential criminal. It is alien to our traditions and the Attorney-General’s statement has done nothing to allay the widespread fears and concern to which expression has been given.
The statement accuses organisations of being terrorists, of being recruiting grounds, of being umbrella organisations for terrorists. But is there credible evidence to sustain those accusations? If there is none he has monstrously maligned and condemned a group of Australian citizens who have no redress and who will long bear the scars of his action. But if he has the evidence why has he not used the courts? Why has he chosen the Parliament to present a slanted and highly prejudicial distortion of the truth? These are the questions the statement does not answer. It is a statement for which the Attorney-General must carry the shame of the Australian nation that it was ever made.
– Order! Senator Greenwood, you indicated to me that you wished to table some documents. Do you seek leave to table the documents?
– Yes. I seek leave to table the documents which I said in the course of my statement I would table.
– Is leave granted? There being no objection, leave is granted.
– I table those documents which are as follows:
Yugoslav Migrant Problems and related matters’.
Co-ordinating Group on Politically Motivated Acts of Violence’. (approved by Attorney-General, 6th October 1972)
– It is a great pity that Senator Greenwood did not wait until after last week-end to compose his speech, or at least he was not adroit enough to make a few amendments to it after the events of last week-end. Otherwise, presumably, he would not have brought himself to say:
Above all else, he - - referring to the present Attorney-General (Senator Murphy) - has refused to prosecute anybody or any organisation for any criminal activity of any kind.
I am perfectly aware - and I will keep well within your ruling, Mr President - that these charges against these particular people are sub judice and I will make no comment at all upon their guilt or otherwise. But surely, I am permitted to say that Senator Greenwood’s statement is already out of date, because we, as a government, have done within 4 months what his Government and its predecessors did not get around to doing in 23 years. I would remind Senator Greenwood, seeing that we are involved with selectivity, of another little passage given in one of his many obfuscating, dodging answers to questions asked in this place that appears on page 899 of last year’s Senate Hansard. He said, when referring to raids that had been carried out by the Commonwealth Police after the Yugoslav Government’s aide-memoire - admittedly not at Senator Greenwood’s instigation, because he did not have, the initiative to order these raids:
I may say, however, that in the premises of certain persons which were searched the police found no arms or explosives, which one would suppose would have been found if any allegation of terrorism was to be sustained.
I hope Senator Greenwood will remember that memorable phrase when the charges against these men are ultimately heard. I will refer no more to those charges.
One of the great burdens of his apologia has been to accuse the Attorney-General of selectivity. Evidently we misrepresented Senator Greenwood by not producing all the files of the Attorney-General’s Department, all of the files of the Commonwealth Police and all of the files of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. If all those documents had been produced there would not have been room for honourable senators to come into this chamber. I ask honourable senators to ponder this point: What does it matter what we did not produce if we did produce documents which proved the charge against Senator Greenwood up to the hilt and which he has chosen to ignore? I will refer again to some of the documents which Senator Greenwood has not mentioned today. For instance, do honourable senators recall that Senator Murphy gave chapter and verse about the existence in this country of a Croatian extremist organisation known as the United Croats of West Germany? I can find no reference in Senator Greenwood’s statement today about this organisation. Is it because he has no answer? What does it matter if he says that everything was not produced, if he is not prepared to answer or has no answer to what was produced?
I have had a look through a lot of these documents. I admit that there are many bland documents among them and that there are many of the sort of statements that one constantly gets from policemen, who have, perhaps, not pushed their inquiries far enough, which say in effect the things which Senator
Greenwood quoted today. But how does that get him out of the report of Commissioner Davis, the Chief of the Commonwealth Police, dated 30th May 1972, which was long before he was giving these answers setting out chapter and verse the numbers, the meeting places and the activities of the United Croats of West Germany. Why have we not heard from Senator Greenwood about this organisation? Why have we not heard from him about the Department of Immigration brochure? Why did Senator Greenwood make no mention of this brochure put out by the Department of Immigration which also set out information, chapter and verse, about the United Croats of West Germany? And what about the Marie documents which were found in this raid which showed clearly that Marie was dealing with an organisation and was linked with terrorism in Yugoslavia, as did documents seized from Srecko Rover? I say again: What does it matter at all if other documents were excluded so long as documents were included which squarely fitted Senator Greenwood with knowledge of the existence of terrorist organisations and which he has not chosen to mention today? Where does his defence stand in the light of that?
We have heard 30 pages of words. We have heard plenty of protestations about his meeting with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and with, the Commonwealth Police. We have heard him make pious denunciations in the hope that the problem would go away. But what did Senator Greenwood do about this irrefutable evidence of the existence df these terrorist organisations? He told us exactly nothing. In his usual style he took upon himself a very selfrighteous stance today. The many accusations of misrepresentation he made against Senator Murphy-
– They are justified too.
– 1 will read the honourable senator’s quotation in a moment; everything I say will be documented. For example, Senator Greenwood, when referring to one document, mentioned, the fact that a certain document had only come into existence - I refer to the police report - on 23rd November; and therefore he could not be imputed with knowledge of it as he had relinquished office prior to then. To use his exact words. I refer to page 10 of his statement. The honourable senators on my right who are interjecting can check that I quote the paragraph in full. I refer to the second last paragraph on page 10. I ask all honourable senators alongside me to follow closely what I read. I am quoting from Senator Greenwood’s statement. He said:
First he refers extensively -
– to the police report of 23rd November which he has tabled and which represented, apparently, the final conclusions of the Commonwealth Police. It is a document never produced to me and he would know this. And yet he attempts to build a case on the assumption that it was material known to and in the hands of the previous Government.
Let us test the self-righteousness and the honesty of Senator Greenwood against what Senator Murphy actually said. If honourable senators really want to know they should turn to page 10 of Senator Murphy’s statement which refers to this document. After quoting from that document Senator Murphy said:
The police report from which I have quoted is dated 23rd November 1972.
He said nothing about this document being in Senator Greenwood’s possession. In fact he carefully showed that he was not relying on this for what he alleged against Senator Greenwood. He went on to say:
However, a preliminary report on documents seized from Maric, Rover and others was made by the Acting Commissioner of Commonwealth police to the Attorney-General’s Department on 12th September 1972 and the Attorney-General would undoubtedly have seen this report Though all the seized documents had not been translated at this stage, there were references to maps, to the receipt for the transmission of money to Vegar and to handwritten items relating to the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood and the organisational infrastructure of a troika group. In short, on or soon after 12th September 1972, the then Attorney-General was in possession of evidence that the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood had been revived, was functioning actively, and was associated with the June incursion into Yugoslavia which had been the subject of complaint in the Yugoslav Government’s aide-memoire of 16th August 1972. Yet on 19th September 1972 he returned tohis denials of the existence of any Croatian terrorist organisation in Australia and never resiled from that standpoint throughout the life of the Parliament.
I ask: Who is it who is fooling the Senate today?
– You are.
– Nothing will convince Senator Rae. I am certainly not trying to convince him. We have an example here of Senator Greenwood standing up to defend himself and misrepresenting, in a gross way, the allegation which Senator Murphy made against him and which I submit stands up in full- even after Senator Greenwood’s answer.
Another curious example of the double, standards in which Senator Greenwood specialises and also in which Senator Little specialises is in the references to the suspected agent provocateur of the Yugoslav Government. I recall Senator Little the other day quoting from one of the documents, which evidently he had read, a long statement suggesting that the Yugoslav secret police had been responsible for the murder of many Croatians in Europe, and in Australia.
– It was document A 13, page 2.
– Thank you, senator. I see that he remembers it. Let us see whether he remembers all of it. The curious thing about all these allegations of the actions of UBDA - the Yugoslav secret police - or of other Yugoslav agencies in the documents which we tabled is that they are all the grossest hearsay. There is not one item of the sort of evidence which Senator Greenwood and Senator Little insist on for convicting Croatian terrorists in any of these allegations against the Yugoslav authorites. But evidently they are prepared to accept hearsay as hard evidence when it supports allegations that they want to make against people whom they do not like. But in our case, we are asked on every allegation that we make for evidence that will stand up in a court of law.
This is where I come to the grossest falsification in what Senator Greenwood said for all of last year and what he has said today. I challenge honourable senators to go through the questions and answers that appear in the Hansards of last year. They do not really need to look at anything more than the Hansard of 19th September last when Senator Greenwood was asked and answered about half a dozen questions. None of the questions was: ‘Have you any evidence on which to base a prosecution?’ None of his answers was: ‘We have no evidence on which to base a prosecution’. Senator Greenwood was being asked in layman’s language whether the inquiries by police forces in this country had established a reasonable belief that there were in this country organisations that were engaged in terrorism. He was never asked whether he had evidence for a prosecution. If he was limiting his reply to the proposition that ‘We do not have evidence on which to base a prosecution’, as he was a lawyer talking mostly to laymen why did he not put it in that language? But he never put it in that language. I claim, as we claimed all the way through last year, that what Senator Greenwood was getting at really was to say that as far as he knew, on an investigation of all the documents, it was just not believable that there were Croatian terrorist organisations in this country.
Senator Murphy’s statement proved beyond doubt that there was not only one but also more than one, and Senator Greenwood, despite the mass of words with which he has deluged us today, has made no answer to the principal charges laid against him. He had a lot of fun about not finding any terrorist training camps in the You Yangs. I wonder whether Senator Greenwood ever took the trouble to witness a film that was made by the Croatian organisations and ultimately seized by the Commonwealth police about the training camp at Wodonga. I happen to have seen that film recently. I saw it at the invitation of the Commonwealth Police here in Canberra a couple of weeks ago. I defy any honourable senator, any rational person who witnesses this film to go away believing that there were no training camps for Croatian terrorists in this country. There were hundreds of men including middle-aged fat men, whom one would not see going for a little training run just for the good of their health. One would never see this sort of men out training. They had on Ustasha shirts.
– Perhaps they were Rules footballers.
– They were a funny sort of footballers. They were draped over Citizen Military Forces tanks and being lectured by Australian officers. The question that arose in my mind as I witnessed that film was not only why they went there but also why they bothered to make the film. This film had an introduction and an acknowledgment by a Croatian organisation. I forget which one it was but it was mentioned by Senator Murphy in his statement. Obviously this film was made for propaganda purposes to show throughout Australia and overseas to some of their zealots and to show that they were co-operating with Australian authorities in their training. By the way, I am not suggesting that the CMF was a willing party to any of that deception.
– There is a lot of supposition in this, Senator.
– I invite Senator Little to see the film. I know that he would not be convinced. What I said was that I believe that any rational man would be convinced by this film. But did Senator Greenwood ever bother to see this film? He has talked about selectivity. He has talked about things being picked out which only go against him. He has made no mention of this. Perhaps the great film buff Senator Rae has seen it and we will be favoured with his lucubrations in a few moments.
– That was 1963 - 10 years ago.
– 1963?
– What about updating it a bit?
– What is the proposition? Is it that this did not happen or that it did happen a long while ago so we do not have to worry about it? Also I am interested to see that Senator Greenwood - insofar as he adverted to a few specific charges today - adverted to the charge that he had been an active protector. This chargewas based on the fact that he had given advice against the deportation of Marincic. He adopted the pose of a great civil libertarian. This is a very odd pose for him and one which is very unfamiliar to us in this Senate. He stated:
But he -
That is, Marincic - had committed no act of violence in Australia and, in my opinion, to deport a person to such a country where he will be persecuted for his political opposition to the government of that country is not my, concept of how an Australian Government should act - or of how the Australian people would expect it to act.
Why did he not answer all that Senator Murphy said about him in relation to Marincic? Why did he not answer the charge that there is a clear and recent High Court case which establishes the fact that immigration authorities in Australia do not have to deport a man to the country of his origin.
– Why does not the honourable senator catch up with reality?
- Senator Withers has not caught up with the law. I shall give him a reference if he wants it. In fact, it was given the other night but I think that was after Senator Withers had done his 10-minute stint in the chamber. This is probably news to him today. In any event, the case is reported and it establishes that Senator Greenwood’s advice to the Department of Immigration was given on a false basis. Yet he chooses to repeat it today. In other words, he is the one who is being selective. He has produced documents of a bland nature and he chooses to ignore damaging documents and the arguments which were put in Senator Murphy’s statement to which he has no answer. Nor has he seen fit to mention the fact that the charge which has come from our side of the chamber of the existence of Croatian extremist organisations in this country is not a fantasy of the Australian Labor Party. As Senator Murphy showed, it is something which was constantly adverted to by the more responsible members of the previous Government, including Sir Garfield Barwick who suggested that a prosecution might be considered under section 30a of the Crimes Act to which Senator Greenwood has referred. In case the lawyers opposite do not know what section 30a of the Crimes Act provides, it will be found that its heading refers to illegal organisations. If Sir Garfield Barwick, as long ago as 1964, was suggesting-
– 1964 is not 1967.
– Yes, it was 1964. If as long ago as 1964 Sir Garfield Barwick and if in 1968, to bring it more up to date, Mr McMahon were suggesting action under the Grimes Act, it means that at least they were convinced, without having access to the information that was available to Senator Greenwood, of the existence of Croatian extremist organisations in this country. Senator Greenwood was the only one who could not see the evidence or, if he did see it, refused to acknowledge it. Perhaps he went looking only for documents which supported the continuation of inactivity. In any event, they are the only documents he has chosen to produce.
Finally, let me refer very briefly to the red herrings that have been drawn across this trail in an attempt to obscure the main issue. The main issue is whether there is Croatian extremism in this country; whether previous governments have done anything to suppress it; and whether this Government is stepping into the vacuum and ensuring that bombs do not continue to go off in our streets. I think the most absurd red herring of all that I have seen concerns the comments of Mr Askin and his threat that in future he would give no cooperation to the Commonwealth law enforcement authorities. What is the proposition? Is it that before the police raid suspected terrorists they should send them some notification of their intention to call or that, like a linesman in the employ of the PostmasterGeneral’s Department who has called to fix a person’s telephone, the police should leave a card saying: ‘We called today and will be back another day’? Is it suggested that when the police do call on the suspected terrorists they should search only in cupboards but should not look in ceilings or other places for concealed weapons? Is this the sort of proposition which will be put forward by the other lawyers? I notice that Senator Rae has his pen poised. Obviously he is getting ready to stand and defend the indefensible. I hope we are not to hear any more, nonsense. 1 feel confident that the ordinary people of Australia do not split hairs in the manner in which honourable senators opposite have been doing. I am sure that the people of Australia do not expect the police to act in this way.
– Police state.
– ‘Police state’, says Senator Webster. I am sure that the ordinary people do not expect the police to act in this kid glove way in attempting to stamp out this novel and very threatening feature of Australian life. I suggest, Mr Deputy President, that the exercise that we have had from Senator Greenwood today leaves him just where he was after he had been exposed by Senator Murphy last week. If this is the best he has to offer in his defence, the charges that were made against him stand - that he was soft on terrorism, that he was irresponsible, and that he was indifferent to the existence of this menace in our midst.
– Why have you not prosecuted anybody arising out of all of that evidence?
– We have. Does the honourable senator not read the newspapers?
– I suppose the most that can be said about the speech of Senator James McClelland is that he tried but he certainly did not score. My colleague Senator Greenwood ought to be congratulated on his speech here this afternoon. Without doubt he has refuted the spurious allegations made against him last week. As I said when Senator Murphy’s statement was put before the Senate last week, it was a great disappointment to this Senate and to the Australian nation which had waited anxiously for nearly 2 weeks to hear what he had to say to justify his actions. They were nobody else’s actions but his own - actions for which he accepts responsibility and, what is more, for which he alone must accept responsibility. But what did the Senate hear? We were provided with a statement which dealt with Croatian organisations in this country - a statement which named persons as being associated with various activities but against whom no criminal proceedings had been instituted. If they are guilty of offences, and specifically of the type of offences that the Attorney-General (Senator Murphy) alleges, why did he not prosecute them in the past 4 months? It is irrelevant to state, as the Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) does, that the trail has gone cold. There is no limit on time in which to make criminal prosecutions. If the evidence alleged is there, why were not these people prosecuted weeks ago? Or does the AttorneyGeneral face the same problem that his predecessor m office faced, that although there is materia] and information available on alleged activities in this country, there is no real evidence which can be used to bring the persons concerned to trial in connection with such activities?
Following criticism on this point we now have arrests. If the evidence was available for such arrests before, why did not the AttorneyGeneral instigate action? The whole affair is beginning to look like a Hollywood extravaganza. It would, however, be unwise to look at it in that light: It is far too serious a matter. It is to be hoped that the making of such arrests was not withheld or instigated at the particular time simply to serve Senator Murphy’s political goals because it is well to remember that in this country it is the practice and the right that persons are not to be held guilty because of association or inference. Everyone is entitled to be tried before the courts to determine whether he is guilty or innocent. That is not a privilege but a right which is enjoyed by all the residents of this country. And if anyone should be familiar with the statement in Wolfenden’s case, which I paraphrase as being to the effect that throughout the web of the criminal law one golden thread is always to be seen, namely: every man is presumed to be innocent until proved guilty’, it ought to be the Attorney. General. I ask: Does he or does he not accept this statement as the cornerstone of our criminal law? If he does not, then he ought to say so in unequivocal terms. If he does accept the statement, why does he not adhere to it?
We have been given a recitation of alleged terrorist groups and of alleged activities of terrorists yet we have not been shown any connection between the persons and the organisations named and the acts of violence that have taken place in Australia in recent times. We have been given material and information to show that there are individuals and groups who are prepared to advocate violence. But it is another thing to present evidence that they actually have engaged in violence and terrorism and to have such charges upheld in the courts. If there is evidence, Senator Murphy ought to act to have those responsible arrested and charged. To fail to do so is irresponsible. To have made assertions against people and have them judged guilty by association or inference is unforgivable.
This criticism has been made by many in the past week and it obviously is hurting the Attorney-General as he now tries to pull a few rabbits out of the hat. Naming people and implying that they are responsible for certain actions is a highly dangerous precedent for an Attorney-General to take. People’s livelihoods and reputations can be destroyed with no right of redress. In fact, the allegations and implications made by the Attorney-General are similar to those made by Senator McCarthy in the United States nearly 20 years ago. That was a time when lives were wrecked because of assertions and implications made against individuals. It would seem now that Senator Murphy is going to do for the Left what Senator McCarthy was doing for the Right. I say that we want no further examples of Murphyism in this country.
The Attorney-General may be certain of the co-operation of the Opposition in any attempt to rid this country of terrorism and violence - but he will not get the co-operation of this side of the Senate if he intends to pursue that aim by destroying the principles of civil and legal rights which are the basis of our way of life. We do not wish one evil to be excised from the community and replaced by another. That is a limitation on justice and legal rights - a limitation determined by the
Attorney-General who seems to have a determination to secure overall control of as many police forces and police activities as possible. It is a tendency that the Senate and the nation must watch carefully. No one man has a monopoly of truth or justice. We have a system which provides against that and our present system should not be eroded. The Attorney-General has been given no special insight to determine what is tolerable and what is not. He has no special licence to judge individuals guilty. That is the task of the courts where accused and accuser are both given equal opportunity to state their respective cases.
Justice and civil rights are not enhanced by the Attorney-General’s tabling documents in this Parliament whereby people are named as associated with activities which we deplore when he has not taken any action to have the persons so named arrested and charged. Because of the pursuit of information for the purposes of the Attorney-General we have already had notice of instances brought to the attention of the Senate involving people who claim that they have had their rights infringed. The home of a pensioner was raided, apparently without any search warrant. Surely that is an infringement of his rights. A Canberra builder has claimed that he has been slandered because of accusations made in the document.
The actions of the Attorney-General cause tensions and divisions in our society, divisions which we believe are entirely unnecessary. Is the Australian community, and particularly migrants from communist regimes in Eastern Europe, or from Nazi Germany or from Fascist Italy, to live in constant fear of a knock on the door in the middle of the night? What right of redress have these people? Certainly it is contrary to human rights as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for which Senator Murphy professes to have a very high regard. Article 12 states that no-one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, or to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Mr President, persons in this country have come to expect such rights and there should be no infringement of them now. While speaking on the subject of individuals and their rights I would like to deal with the question of deportation to which Senator Murphy has referred. He said that recommendations have been made that persons need not necessarily be deported to the country from which they came. This to me seems to be rather a contradiction in terms. If a man is found guilty of terrorist activities, what other countries will be prepared to accept him?
We believe that assurances should be given that no-one will be deported to a country which in turn may hand him over to another government which may exact retribution, solely because of that person’s political beliefs. If a person has been found guilty of a crime in this country, has been successfully prosecuted and has served a sentence, it would be improper for him to be returned directly or indirectly to a country where he may be subjected to further punishment, perhaps even execution, for no other reason than the fact that he disagrees with the government which is in power.
On 29th March the Minister for Immigration (Mr Grassby) also pointed out in relation to deportations that each case is to be treated on its merits. He went on to say:
This is not a casual procedure. It is not a procedure, I might say, that could be carried out at the behest of any government or any authorities outside our own country. The only decision that can be made is made by the Minister for Immigration on the advice of many organs of government and we will be proceeding with justice and compassion. I can assure the House of that.
However, Mr Justice Connor pointed out in the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory on Monday, 26th March 1973, in relation to the deportation of a Yugoslav relating to a criminal offence that the departmental summary provided from one of these organs of government was at variance in some cases with the finding of the judge. His Honour said:
I do not think that the passages in the summary were a fair presentation of what His Honour said, nor do I think that these passages were fair to the applicant.
Certain passages in the summary were not a fair presentation of what the presiding judge said, nor were they fair to the applicant. To overcome this problem the Opposition demands that in future a commissioner be appointed under the Migration Act to investigate and hear arguments regarding deportation orders. This would preserve the integrity not only of the Government but also of a person being deported. Mention must be made also of the professed aims of the new Australian Government in relation to those who have come and settled here. There was to be one family, one citizenship and one nation. These are the emotional and highsounding phrases with which we have been bombarded. Yet, the actions in past weeks make the whole intention of that laughable. As a result of the Government’s actions in the past weeks we see increasing tensions between various groups in our community. These tensions have resulted from the heavy handed and inappropriate action of the present Attorney-General. Migrants have been singled out They are said to be different because they are terrorists. It is not just Yugoslavs and their children who have been singled out at schools, at work and in other areas: it has applied to all migrants. The result of this can be seen in the organisation which was formed in Canberra last Sunday to try to protect their rights as citizens in this country.
Immigrants, naturalised or not, are no longer sure of their status in this country. That is deplorable. I do not wish to deal further with these aspects of what Senator Murphy has said. However, I point out, as 1 did earlier, that we have good cause to be concerned for our own personal and civil liberties. We do not want another example of the attitude expressed by the wartime Labor government on civil rights when individuals were detained not because of any evidence that they were engaged in subversive activities but because they were thought to be. The drama and almost hysteria associated with the present Attorney-General’s action must not be allowed to create a climate in which such action might be acceptable. We in the Opposition will not tolerate that. In stamping out violence and terrorism the Attorney-General will have the wholehearted support of the Opposition and of the people of this country. No-one wishes this country to be used as a training ground for any one particular group, irrespective of the political beliefs of the organisation. However, this does not give the Attorney-General a right to impugn the character of individuals and it does not give him a right to limit the natural rights that persons residing in this country enjoy. We object to the methods and the means he employs.
I now draw to the attention of the Senate page 28 of the Attorney-General’s statement where, in 2 short paragraphs, he makes reference to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. We do not object to the fact that the Director-General of ASIO will operate mainly from Canberra. This is the area from which most Government business emanates. This course is reasonable and perhaps sensible. Of course, it will mean also that Senator Murphy will now have to make only one raid instead of 2. However, one cannot but conjecture on the relationship of ASIO to the Government of this country. The Attorney-General has assured us that ASIO did not refuse him any information. Yet, he finds it necessary to visit the regional office here in Canberra at some time around midnight. The next morning we had the spectacle of Marshal Murphy and his posse of Commonwealth policemen, armed with Bear tape md sealing wax, descending on the headquarters of ASIO in Melbourne. It is a cartoonist’s dream, but unfortunately for the people of Australia it is more likely to end in a nightmare.
What prompted Senator Murphy to go to the Canberra office? What prompted him to go to the Melbourne office? We are still unaware why he found it necessary to visit the Canberra office in the first place. One can surmise only that in taking the action which he did Senator Murphy showed a complete lack of trust in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. The Senate has tried, unsuccessfully so far, to have the AttorneyGeneral tell us why he raided the ASIO office. As yet we have not extracted that information. The claim that these are the days of open government cannot be supported. If it was not lack of trust, what was it? He obviously does not trust the organisation. Otherwise why did he seal its safes? One might well ask: Against whom were they sealed? The Attorney-General? Were they sealed against him? Were they sealed against the Commonwealth police whom he took with him, or were they sealed against members of ASIO? If he does not trust the Organisation, how can he expect anyone else to trust it? How can he expect anyone else to provide information to it? Senator Murphy, by not trusting ASIO, must have placed grave doubts in the minds of anyone who has had dealings with the Organisation.
It has been alleged that Senator Murphy wishes to gain control of the Treasury investigation branches and that so far he has been unsuccessful in that attempt. If this is the case, I ought to warn those organisations to be wary because if Senator Murphy loses confidence in any other organisation for not providing him with information which he wishes to use for political purposes they are likely to have a visit from the Commonwealth Police, led by the veteran marshal of the Senate. The Senate and the country are entitled to know what prompted the AttorneyGeneral to act in the extraordinary manner that he did. The security system has been plunged into disrepute. The system is meant to be free of any political bias. By the admission of the Attorney-General, it certainly has been free of any political bias in the past. One is doubtful and one cannot help but feel c concerned that this may not be the case in fu .i.e. If ASIO acts in a manner in which Senator Murphy, the judge of all wisdom, believes it should not act, it will once again be subjected to the pounding of feet of the Commonwealth Police, because what we are looking at here is not a problem of Croatian terrorism nor how Senator Greenwood handled that problem. ASIO is not incidental to the terrorism statement. The terrorism statement is incidental to Senator Murphy’s action in visiting the ASIO regional office in Canberra and raiding the office in Melbourne.
Legally did Senator Murphy have the right to take that action? I believe that he must look for his authority in the Act of Parliament, and the Act of Parliament gives him no authority to do what he did. ASIO is not part of his Department, and it is not sufficient for the Attorney-General to say that he is responsible. What does he mean? Does he mean that he is politically responsible? If so, from where does he draw this responsibility? Is he legally responsible? If so, from where does he draw his legal right to act? It is most certainly not laid down in the Act of Parliament which establishes ASIO as an independent body. If Senator Murphy can exercise his right and can claim responsibility for it against one statutory authority, what is to prevent him from doing the same to another? We believe that Senator Murphy is in breach of constitutional law. He is in breach of privileges which were established for the Parliament and the people over 3 centuries ago. Senator Murphy’s action is, of course, critical in itself, but of equal importance is the precedent which he establishes in taking the. action that he did. If Senator Murphy is allowed to get away with this, what control will we in the Parliament have over future invasions by an officer of the Crown into areas which are reserved for the Parliament and for which Parliament has given legal authority?
I now turn to the question of the use of documents - that is, ministerial correspondence - in the way that Senator Murphy has used them. I say that it has not been done to elucidate points of policy. The correspondence has been used simply to criticise and to denigrate the former AttorneyGeneral. It seems to be nothing more and nothing less than the pursuit of a personal vendetta. Senator Murphy has in no way justified his own actions, but he has broken a long standing convention, not because the matter is of such great importance as the Prime Minister alleges, but simply to ensure that - he could select information from ministerial correspondence and use it to his own political advantage.
I take this opportunity to remind Senator Murphy of Mr Chifley’s question to Mr Menzies in the House of Representative- in March 1950 regarding the use of confidential documents or, as Mr Chifley described them, documents which purport to be so in debates’. Mr Chifley regarded it ‘as a decent and fair practice’ not to use such papers. It is fairly obvious to us that Mr Chifley, the Prime Minister responsible for the establishment of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and a Labor man truly representative of the working people of this country, had, like other Australians, different standards of fairness and decency from those to which Senator Murphy adheres. There is no doubt that Mr Chifley would never have approved the use of ministerial correspondence simply to try to denigrate a political opponent in the way Senator Murphy has. It is interesting to note that the then Prime Minister, Mr Menzies, replied that he was ‘aggrieved of this procedure when in Opposition. I must adopt a similar attitude as Prime Minister. I have no doubt that it is a sound general principle’.
I have covered a number of aspects of what the Attorney-General has said. I should like to reiterate that we fully support any action to bring before the courts organisations and individuals charged with terrorist activities - not may be or thought to be but charged with. Persons should not be held to be guilty by inference or association. But the Opposition rejects the means and the methods employed by Senator Murphy and, accordingly, I move:
Leave out all words after ‘that’ and insert in lieu - having carefully studied the statement, the Senate resolves that the Attorney-General, Senator Murphy, does not deserve the confidence of the Senate because:
I commend the amendment to the Senate.
-I rise today in a unique situation. I can say more or less: ‘I told you so’. Six years ago whenI first entered this Senate 1 was proud of the fact that I had long standing friendships and comradeships with major sections of the Yugoslav community in New South Wales. For more than 5 years I stressed to various Ministers for Immigration and various Attorneys-General that they could defuse a situation that was developing. I used the phrase that a very minute section of the Croatian community was given the status of what might be called ‘teacher’s pet’. I say that because even at this moment when we are debating this issue I know that there are thousands of Yugoslavs in industry, as well as in primary industry such as market gardens, who are bearing the unfair odium of a situation which has been allowed to escalate.
I can say very simply that in the last hours of the previous Parliament I went to the then Attorney-General, Senator Greenwood, and suggested to him that I was prepared to bring a sizable delegation of moderate Yugoslavs from Sydney to talk to him and to Dr Forbes. For 5 years these people had been getting all sorts of abuse which culminated in a lot of more serious action which was detailed by the present Attorney-General (Senator Murphy). This is all that I was told: Look, is this the time for this delegation to be received?’ Yet remarkably, when Senator Greenwood, the former Attorney-General, was talking earlier, he admitted that he had received a delegation from other sections of the Croatian community which claimed that they were being wrongly stigmatised. I do not object to any Minister or former Minister seeing any segment of any particular section of the community but I object to this sort of favouritism. I think it is said that ‘as ye sow so shall ye reap’.
Referring back to our immigration policy, there were pockets of malcontents amongst some of the Croatians in South America, West Germany and other places who came here as migrants due to earlier lax screening. I have never had any objection to anybody’s political views about world affairs provided those people do not resort to strong arm methods to force their views down somebodyelse’s neck. For 6 long years numerous elements of the Slav community have said to me: ‘How long do we have to cop this?’ One of the dilemmas that this Government confronted was how it could relate its foreign policy to its internal policy when seeking the ethnic vote. I think all honourable senators would agree that it is the prerogative of people to switch their political allegiances over a period of time and in the case of this ethnic group it shows their maturity. The fact that we can go out and get their support, or the Opposition Parties can go and get their support, is the essence of democracy.
The point I want to make is this: I saw some of the crocodile tears expressed by the Leader of the Opposition (Senator Withers) about the rights of migrants and I wondered whether he had referred back to speeches such as those I made in the past 5 years in which I begged the then Government to change the Crimes Act in order to avoid discrimination against people who had acquired Australian citizenship not having been born in Australia. Because in the 1920s a non-Labor Attorney-General, Sir John Latham, overreacted to an industrial situation, the Government of the day brought in infamous sections of the Crimes Act. I say this to the Opposition: Notwithstanding the events which have occurred, the plain fact of the matter is that the discrimination in the Crimes Act and the previous Government’s failure to provide portability of pensions were 2 of the reasons why the Labor Party obtained the major ethnic vote of the major groups at the last election.
I am not running away from the events of the last few weeks. I have been to many, many gatherings. My leader, the AttorneyGeneral (Senator Murphy) will, I am sure, have the pleasure of bringing to this chamber in the not too far distant future an amendment to get over this gross discrimination in our Crimes Act. I wonder how some of the people who consistently backed up the refusal of their Attorney-General to do this will justify their support for us. The Opposition are in a cleft stick. They will not be game enough to oppose that amendment because if they do it will show what a travesty is the amendment put forward today by the Leader of the Opposition to the motion that we are debating.
I want to take this escalation of terror a little further. I do not want to talk merely of the bomb situation and I will put it simply. In Australia today if various people desire to commemorate different issues which other people do not like, those who do not like it can stay away. From 1964 onward one element of the Yugoslav community has felt that the 29th November should be commemorated. Other people had no right to barnstorm those functions and to try to destroy them. I invite honourable senators to look at the records of the Maccabean Hall in Sydney on occasions when one section of the Yugoslav community was commemorating the forging of Yugoslavia as a nation. They will find that those functions always were subject to incidents. They might have started with the releasing of a smoke bomb but they led to something else. By contrast none of the extreme right wing functions was ever upset. I have been in those situations.
But let us look at the other side of the coin. My Party, through the then Lord Mayor of Sydney, Alderman Harry Jensen, facilitated the right wing Croats establishing their own club in Buckingham Street. The Labor Party had a majority in the Sydney City Council and it allowed the Croats to establish the club there because they were entitled to do so. But I must say that some of those people have never reciprocated. However, I want to go beyond that and deal with an answer that I received from Senator Wright in his capacity as the Minister in this chamber representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs in the last Government.
In my own pragmatic way I asked very clearly, in the same way as I have done at every gathering I have attended - even at the gathering which was held as late as last Saturday and which Senator Kane also attended - what would happen when the crunch was finally on if Australia had diplomatic relations with countries of varied ideologies. In the case of Yugoslavia, Senator Wright, in reply to my question, said that it would be regarded as bad for the present relative peace and power balance between the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Warsaw powers if Yugoslavia fragmented. I say very respectfully that over the last 10 years members of the Opposition, for cheap political purposes, went about suggesting certain things. When some of the extremists of the Right suggested that perhaps a third world war would result in the redrawing of the boundaries of Europe, members of the Opposition should have been courageous enough to say: ‘It is not on’. If people do not like the foreign policy of the Labor Party or of the Liberal Party they can go to the ballot box and vote as they wish.
I say here and now that the bulk of the Yugoslav community in Australia was quite prepared to accept that point. They may have had a nostalgic viewpoint about Europe, whatever they thought of the situation, but the bulk of the Yugoslav community accepted the criteria that I am putting forward. For at least 5 years in numerous hotels, at numerous football grounds and in the Snowy Mountains Authority, a perennial dialogue has ensued. A chap would say to some Australian: ‘Yes, I am a Yugoslav’. One of these minute elements in the Croat community would then tackle him, abuse him - verbally or perhaps by stronger means - and claim: ‘You were disloyal to your homeland’.
I say to honourable senators, as I said at the commencement of my speech: The Yugoslav community has made a tremendous contribution to Australia, not only postwar Australia. They were some of the pioneers in Broken Hill in the 1920s and were in Kalgoorlie and in the fruit-growing industry in
Shepparton. Probably those people were not subject to these perennial stresses about the cold war in Europe. But 1 say that it was the job of the Commonwealth Government, in particular over the last 5 years, to discourage these extreme attitudes of trying to change Australia’s foreign policy. In the 5 or 6 years that I have been a member of the Senate 1 have heard the previous Government lecture us on where the foreign policy of the Australian Council of Trade Unions and its affiliated unions ended and where the policy of the government of the day took over, and that principle should apply with regard to right wing extreme attitudes.
Let us take it a little further. Two yean ago I went to Yugoslavia as a member of a delegation which included Senator Davidson, the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Sir William Aston, and several of my South Austraiian colleagues now in the Government - Mr Chris Hurford and Dr Ritchie Gun. We were received well in Yugoslavia, and I can assure honourable senators that when there were aspects of society on which we differed, we expressed our view. At a banquet Sir William Aston did a very good job. Rightly, he extended an invitation to the Yugoslav Government to send a representative to Australia. This leads me to my criticism of the previous Government for doing too little too late. If there had been another 12 months before the visit of Mr Bijedic, probably we could have de-fused the situation. What I mean when 1 say that is that Mr Suljak. and the other people listed in the statement made by the Attorney-General, could have been eased out. I know that time was not on our side and that Senator Murphy was in a cleft stick.
I can well imagine what would have happened if a bomb had been exploded or if there had been some mishap caused by only a minute minority of the Croatian section of the Yugoslav community. We still could not have pleased members of the Opposition. They would have said: ‘There you are; with your idea of open government, your idea of more civil liberties, you have encouraged an era of lawlessness’. Senator Murphy had a tough decision to make and I say, not only to the Senate but also to the people outside - whether they be native-born Australians or people who have acquired Australian citizenship by adoption - that we have a system of priorities of safety for the overseas visitor and later remove discriminating provisions of the Crimes Act which were directed at the ethnic component of our population. We had to afford the same protection to Mr Bijedic as we would to the ruler of Greece - the Government of which I abhor - if he came out here. I know that Senator Murphy would have applied the same rules and procedures if people of the far right were in that situation. What is the corollary to all this? We have indicated that we are doing something under the Crimes Act. Honourable senators opposite had 20 years in which to do something and they did not do it.
But to get back again to this series of events. The fact is that it could have been dealt with on a low key. When I compare the statement of the Attorney-General with the document which has just been submitted by Senator Greenwood, the latter is remarkable for the matters which the honourable senator has omitted. He talks about evidence. We all know that at times the art of good police work is to steer away from a collision of opinion on the streets. This has been done effectively and it can be done again. I have had conversations with the Commonwealth police and with the Special Branch in New South Wales. I can say that mounting agitation came from a small element in the community. The majority were sick and tired of always turning the other cheek. Reference has been made to agents provocateurs. I say this to the Senate: Let us be realistic about the situation. There is not a member of Parliament who has not had to be the bridge between the Yugoslav Government or the Spanish Government and this Government on proxy marriages and things like that. I do not doubt that an attitude percolated back to Yugoslavia - the same as it could to other countries - that a small group of people were continuing with what happened in World War II. It has been good enough for this country to advocate for trade purposes - as honourable senators opposite have done - a better relationship with Japan. Why have objections about good relations with Yugoslavia which was a World War II ally?
I can remember a previous Prime Minister who was an honourable senator and who represented his Government in the Senate in relation to foreign affairs. I refer to the Rt Hon. J. G. Gorton. In reply to a question asked by me in relation to what we regarded as left wing governments, he said: ‘Look, whether it be Roumania or Yugoslavia, these governments do not have outside territorial ambitions.’ This is where I get back to a central theme. The winds of change caught honourable senators in the previous Government. It had to have trade agreements with eastern Europe. At the same time it pandered to a minority who were going on with agitation including anti-Yugoslavia propaganda. Mark you, I am being very frank about this because I can anticipate somebody from the Australian Democratic Labor Party coming into this debate, as he is entitled to do. These irritant little issues could be curbed. 1 say this with some trepidation. I know of an incident at the Bonegilla camp where there was a Croatian Catholic chaplain - of the same belief as myself. He thought so little of the Sermon on the Mount that he was prepared to render to the spiritual wants of only the Croatian people in that camp. In other words, if they were Slovenes, Poles or Lithuanians he put a ban on them. Senator McManus knows full well that the authorities spoke to the ecclesiastical people in Melbourne about this man who v/as put off limits in Bonegilla. I say quite candidly that I do not care what belief-
– I have never heard of that in my life.
- Senator, that is the truth. That man persisted in a stupid attitude. Senator Withers talked about a better Australia. We are not going to have fanatics - whether they be of any belief - who persist in such an attitude. J, like the honourable senator, do not want this debate to deteriorate into a Serbo-Croatian dispute of Orthodox versus Catholicism. I want to bring it out into the open. If a man wants to be bigoted Orthodox or bigoted Catholic he should not be given a position of authority. This is one of the things about which I have been so concerned. I will go further in relation to this. I do not want to incriminate public servants but I know that senior officers of the Department of Immigration will confirm what I am saying. One or two chaplains were at fault. The former Government’s chickens are coming home to roost. On the Orthodox side it did not help when the Government tried to develop an aura around Mihailovic. His statue was blown up here. I do not agree that people should blow up a statue of Mihailovic. But, after all, he was not a religious leader; he was a political leader, and the statue should not have been permitted to be erected. If at some stage the previous Government had done something to dampen down these issues we would not have the atmosphere that we have today. Various chaplains from migrant groups have said that there is no grey area in relation to this matter; one is either for these people or against them. This is the thought that I have tried to project.
But 1 suppose, there has been a certain difference in the evolution of the backgrounds of honourable senators opposite and my own. But Mr Kokic, a top officer in the Department of Labour and National Service, as it then was, was allowed to go overseas to an international Croatian Brotherhood revolution gathering. Honourable senators opposite harp about whether Wilfred Burchett fraternised with the North Vietnamese. Honourable senators opposite should be consistent. 1 will not weary the Senate by talking about the 3 major groups - the HRB, the UHNj or the HIRO - that are supposed to have and do have some militant attitudes in relation to the resurrection of the state of Croatia. None of the documents released by the previous Government have yet mentioned Srecko Rover. I challenge honourable senators opposite to come clean about Srecko Rover. The previous Government took his passport from him. By doing so it either threw out civil liberties or it had a reason for its action. If the former is the case it proves what Senator Murphy and all of us have said, namely, that senior people have been using Australia as a base to go to Europe and the United States to foment trouble. This is what I am getting at because, if we look at Balkan politics, it will be remembered that an episode in Sarajevo in 1914 started a world war. I do not say that the situation here is of the same degree of seriousness, but the fact of the matter is that we are obliged to keep agreements that we sign with countries.
In the case of Srecko Rover, so far no honourable senator opposite, from Senator Greenwood down, has been prepared to deny that he was not engaged in international lawlessness. If people of the far left misbehave in this way I fully expect the Attorney-General to see that the law prevails. I have said on a previous occasion without any inhibitions that when Lance Sharkey got off the beam with his utterances in the 1940s, the then AttorneyGeneral, Dr Evatt, was quite correct in dealing with him according to law. That pre©- edent should apply also to people of the far right. But honourable senators opposite have had a strange reluctance to grasp the nettle. All that has happened is that the Labor Government has been given the job of trying to improve relations with the migrant groups. I think the test to be applied is this: The big silent majority is still apprehensive, not so much about police raids, which honourable senators opposite talk about but about further terrorist activities. Being mindful of the ground rules laid down by the President, let me refer honourable senators to the newspaper reports of this week. In particular I refer to the ‘Daily Telegraph’ of 3rd April. On page 13 we see ‘Nine people remanded’, and then we see some mention of violent records.
On previous occasions Senator Greenwood has argued about whether Suljak committed a criminal offence or a political offence and whether he should be deported. I notice, by the way, that Senator Greenwood did not mention him on this occasion. But if in 1969 the Commonwealth Police recommended that he should be deported but the Government said: ‘We will give him another chance’, in 1972 he was indicted again. Senator Greenwood should not merely talk about his reception when he returned to his own country. Senator Greenwood talks about his future. All I can say to Senator Greenwood is that as recently as last night I rang a prominent member of the Yugoslav community in Sydney. 1 said: ‘What is your reaction to what we are doing?’ He said: Well, I am pleased that you are going to do something about the Crimes Act. You have to be selective in relation to these wrongdoers but there is only one thing about it, and that is some of these people have long memories and we might get another government and another Attorney-General who will soft soap them and soft pedal on the issue again and some of us would suffer further intimidation’.
I say to honourable senators opposite that when they talk about onus of proof they should bear in mind that even now a lot of these people know that what we are doing is right but they are fearful as to whether the vendetta will continue if what we are doing is not maintained. As I said earlier, I believe it is a case of too little too late. The documents that we have here refer to a number of people but, as I say, I believe that there is only a compartment of people who genuinely want to see an independent republic of Croatia. 1 tell them that if I should have to choose between stability in Europe or Asia and some of these expeditions, there is only one decision I could make. Members of the Opposition would argue that components of Australian society such as the Chamber of Manufactures or the Australian Council of Trade Unions are entitled to put a viewpoint. I say that when the Australian Government decides that it is entitled to help maintain world peace or to achieve better relations with other countries, this too should apply.
Reference has been made to the Croatian community in Canberra- and its credibility can take a bit of a pounding too. I recall that three or four years ago members of that community said they would raise a freedom legion to go to South Vietnam but when I made inquiries of the Army Department about this, I found it was stillborn. Some of these people are masters at gaining publicity and I think quite sincerely that the situation that Senator Murphy faced meant that had the Government let it drift on and lawlessness had escalated, the Opposition still would have asked: What is the Government doing?
Another question concerns the Government’s relations with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. I do not know whether honourable senators opposite have been temporarily blind but had they read Time’ and ‘Newsweek’ magazines in the last 5 weeks and from their reports contrasted the position of Mr Barbour with that of Mr Gray, initial heir apparent to the Director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, and had they read questions raised about the Central Intelligence Agency, they would have seen that this was public debate. I recall reading one report that Senator Tunney of California had been grilling Mr Gray. All of us know that as a fact of life the FBI will continue as a viable organisation in the United States. The CIA, according to reports, was vetted and there was a lot of discussion about its operations.
We must be honest about ASIO. I have known a number of people who were given adverse reports by ASIO but when I, and no doubt other senators too, took up their cases, even on a number of occasions under nonLabor Ministers for Immigration, we were suddenly proved correct and citizenship granted. My point is that ASIO’s batting record was not infallible; it did not get a century every time it went to the wicket. That is why I think we have not impaired security one jot as a result of this investigation, quite apart from the prime idea of harmonising ethnic groups, whether left or right extremists, which is the secondary problem about security operations in this country. If honourable senators opposite were so scrupulous of their responsibilities, why did they incessantly bait Senator Murphy to try to draw him out so that they could get something into the open and then claim that he had more or less prostituted his oath of office? I think it was a very poor performance. The Government has nothing to apologise for regarding its responsibilities for security. The simple fact is that I, like many other people, because of past happenings felt that there were certain elements - even people with distorted minds - who were relied upon as security informants.
I put it to the Opposition in this way: If honourable senators have read the recently published book which deals with Dr Bialoguski’s- of Petrov inquiry fame - own concept of life and they know that he was the sort of man who fed material to security, then I will not accept that he has been objective. Last night in this chamber I heard one telling phrase– I did not hear all the speeches - from Senator Carrick when speaking of the economic technicians and the prices justification tribunal. If one applies that standard to this particular question then I believe that we are entitled to know the methods; not all of us, perhaps; but certainly the Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Murphy) and senior Ministers are entitled to know how ASIO gets its information and from what type of people and how it is evaluated. I say that because I know people who were grossly victimised when they applied for naturalisation and who, when we protested, were granted citizenship - and that ASIO then approached them and asked them whether they would serve in certain listening post capacities. I make that statement very sincerely. As honourable senators know I regard myself as being in the centre of the spectrum of the Labor movement. But if those sort of things happen, ought honourable senators opposite expect me to believe that ASIO was sacrosanct and that every operative was fair and sincere? I tell the Senate that I believe that some operatives with an unduly militarist background thought that the whole of the trade union movement was vermin. In effect it meant that irrespective of whether it was Mr Ducker, Mr Hawke, Mr Pringle or anyone else, it was a viewpoint that was deemed as reasonable.
I believe it is regrettable that the Yugoslav community had to be stigmatised, but out of the Gethsemane they have gone through benefits may yet accrue. Recent events have demonstrated that a minority of people are involved in terrorist activity. They can be weeded out. I think the test of the Government’s sincerity is whether we remove the discriminatory provisions and penal sections of the Crimes Act. They have been in effect for 20 years but the issue was never taken up by the previous Government. I asked a score of questions of Senator Greenwood on this subject. We will also be dealing with the portability of pensions and the actions necessary in respect of Baltic groups, to whom the previous Government failed to give protection, for reasons I do not know. I stand four square behind the very effective statement of the Attorney-General, Senator Murphy, delivered last week. The action it began will be continued when we improve the Crimes Act.
- 1 regret that I heard in Senator Mulvihill’s speech very little that was addressed to the issue before us. The Senate is considering today a matter involving the procedures adopted by the, Attorney-General (Senator Murphy). If they are approved it will be a matter of great shame to this nation and its law enforcement traditions. I strongly support the amendment that has been moved by my Leader, Senator Withers, that the AttorneyGeneral does not deserve the confidence of the Senate. The issue before us for discussion is that on 2nd December last, within a fortnight after the general election, Senator Murphy inherited a position of trust in the office of Attorney-General. It is a position of great responsibility because it is the pivotal point for the administration of British justice in our community. It is the rule of law and the tradition of British justice, upheld by the Attorney-General in the prosecution of crime and by the courts in the adjudication of cases, that distinguish our system from the systems of totalitarianism and authoritarianism which Senator Murphy demonstrated so lamentably when he raided the offices of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation with his praetorian guard of Commonwealth police.
Senator Murphy inherited with the office of Attorney-General the custodianship of the documents in the Attorney-General’s office. According to all proper procedure the AttorneyGeneral has access on a confidential basis to all documents in the posession of the Commonwealth police. It is imperative that an Attorney-General should recognise the confidence with which these documents are kept, first to ensure that the efforts of the police are rewarded by a proper compilation of evidence before they launch a prosecution, and that guarantees to them, according to truthful evidence, a fair chance of success. The second point about his duty is that he guards the documents so that they will be used only in the courts of justice. It is an alien approach, completely despicable in Australian eyes, to have an Attorney-General use police files for the purpose of parliamentary newspaper trial. It is entirely foreign to this country.
The next point is that the Attorney-General has a special relationship with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. As has been pointed out several times during the last few weeks, it is an institution which the Chifley Labor Government felt obliged to establish in a modern community because espionage and counter espionage is so current with all the developed communications of the modern world that an intelligence security organisation is essential to the internal as well as the external security of Australia. That Organisation was established by an Act of Parliament which states that it shall be under the control of the Director-General. Secondly, it is stated that one of the functions of the Organisation is to advise Ministers where the Director-General is satisfied that it is necessary or desirable to do so in respect of matters relevant to security. In setting up that Organisation, Dr Evatt said - I quote from Hansard of 20th September 1949:
In order to protect our internal security, one result of the new arrangement is to give the DirectorGeneral of Security a charter as ample as that possessed by the corresponding authority, in Great Britain. … To all intents and purposes the DirectorGeneral of Security is free from ministerial direction. That arrangement is essential in order to maintain maximum internal security which, I have no doubt, all honourable members wish to have preserved.
The matter was adverted to recently by Lord Denning, Master of the (Rolls, in the Courts of Great Britain. He quoted, with approval,
Sir David Fyfe’s direction in 1952 to the Director-General of the Security Service in Great Britain. He said:
You and your staff will maintain the wellestablished convention whereby Ministers do not concern themselves with detailed information which may be obtained by the Security Service in particular cases, but are furnished wilh such information only as may be necessary, for the determination of any issue on which guidance is sought.
That is to say, information would be furnished in a matter upon which the Minister seeks guidance and the Director-General decides to give it. It has been a ruthless and completely unwarranted invasion of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to have Senator Murphy put on this unprecedented siege of the ASIO institution, invade it, establish 27 Commonwealth police officers inside the building, to act in terrorem against the Director-General and order those police, with no legal warrant whatsoever, to seal files and safes until he, Senator Lionel Murphy, the Attorney-General, could peruse their contents - matters in relation to which the DirectorGeneral of Security in England had been ordered not to provide information. Our Act states that the Director-General shall give the Attorney-General such information as in the discretion of the Director-General is proper.
We have not merely an abuse of the evidence that Senator Murphy has obtained from the police, used for parliamentary and political purposes and not for the courts of justice, and the invasion of ASIO but also the spectacle of plain misrepresentation, distortion of facts and suppression of material files when he came to compose that statement to which we listened last week. It is a farrago of jumbled fiction and fact put together in a most unintelligent and morbid fashion. I have never seen a less formal document in my life. What did he say in the document? He said that there are 2 incidents which give particular significance to our duties with regard to the prosecution of Croatian terrorism. The first is the Bosnian incursion of June last year, in which according to acceptable fact - a core of irrefutable fact that is accepted by most people - about 9 Australians of a total of about 16 people were involved. That was followed in September by the bomb outrages in Sydney.
Upon what did he proceed? He proceeded not to lay before us in an objective fashion or in an analytical fashion a closely reasoned proposition which showed that the documents in his possession and in his Department’s possession prove either that there is a subversive organisation of Croatians operating in Australia or that particular Croatians have been guilty of subversive utterances in relation to Yugoslavia, but he took selective excerpts from those documents and used them with dishonest distortion unprecedented, in my experience, by any lawyer.
Why did he use them? He used them to direct a charge against his predecessor, to try to besmirch Senator Greenwood’s reputation and to impute a want of integrity for the purpose of politically denigrating the Opposition and advancing himself in his political constellation. What does one think of an AttorneyGeneral who disregards the truth and puts a statement together in such a fashion that it is completely dishonest? I shall demonstate that now. He ignored the fact that last year Senator Greenwood told us repeatedly, in response to questions, that after the Bosnian raid and the receipt from the Yugoslav Government of its note giving indications that it was possessed of evidence which warranted investigation, Senator Greenwood immediately ordered investigations on a wide front and ASIO immediately took up an examination of it. The 2 agencies - ASIO and the Commonwealth Police) - informed Senator Greenwood at an early date of progress being made, and in every report that they submitted they made it clear that the reports were interim reports.
The greatest crime which Senator Greenwood could have committed against the agencies - it was his responsibility to guide them in the successful prosecution of terrorist activity in Australia - would have been to disclose prematurely that evidence and to ruin any prospect of the further successful gathering of evidence by the Commonwealth Police that would enable it finally to get evidence, if it were available, to prove in a court of law that there was a criminal organisation or that there was criminal subversive action. It was a cardinal duty of Senator Greenwood, having been warned by the interim reports that progress was being made and that the inquiries were being proceeded with, not to give those facts in detail to the Parliament or to the Press. No Attorney-General worth his salt has ever responded to questions when his answers would tell the Parliament what was contained in a police file relating to an investiga tion that was still being developed for the purpose of producing evidence for courts of justice.
Debate interrupted.
page 823
– Order! I have pleasure in drawing the attention of honourable senators to the presence in the gallery of His Excellency, Hammer DeRoburt, President of the Republic of Nauru. We extend to you, Mr President, a cordial welcome. With the concurrence of honourable senators I propose to extend to you an invitation to take a seat on the floor of the Senate.
Honourable senators - Hear, hear! (President Hammer DeRoburt was thereupon seated accordingly.)
page 823
Debate resumed.
– With regard to the suggestion by Senator Murphy that Senator Greenwood withheld information from us, I have a document dated 6th March 1968 which is a complete review of the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood by the Crime Intelligence Bureau of the Commonwealth Police. This is Document A7. The document states that that organisation was reported, at the conclusion of the investigation, to be dormant. That is to say, as a result of the supervision by police in Australia and Europe, the HRB’s activities in Australia appeared to be dormant.
The next document to which I refer is a report by Superintendent Milte, a gentleman who, I understand, is now on Senator Murphy’s personal staff. The document is dated February 1970, which is 2 years before these accusations were levelled against my colleague, Senator Greenwood. Superintendent Milte, after making a review of these organisations and listing a whole number of crimes, some of which had been solved and some of which were finalised by prosecution, suggests the need for more intensive police activity and greater supervision by the police.
I come now to a report by ASIO in February 1970 to the Secretary of the AttorneyGeneral’s Department. ASIO states that the:
A report from ASIO to the Attorney-General in February 1970 said:
To date there is no evidence to indicate that the Brotherhood has been revived.
Later on in the same document they state:
It should be understood that, so far, evidence is lacking that any of the bomb attacks on Yugoslav establishments have been planned by specific organisations, rather than individually by extremists.
Then we come to a police report of 20th February 1970. No doubt the submission of all these reports was prompted by the letter from Mr Lynch, then Minister for Immigration, and the letter from Mr McMahon, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, both directed to the Attorney-General, to see whether there could be more effective action in stamping out terrorism, and sent in about December 1969. The response of the Commonwealth police - this is set out in the document - was that the indications were that the Croatians were involved in acts of violence in Victoria, Canberra and New South Wales ‘but whether this was a result of activity and control by a Croat organisation was not clear. The Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood or a resultant group appears to be submerged presently. Indeed it seems to be fragmented rather than a cohesive group’. I quote those words in direct response to the dishonest, mendacious allegations of the Attorney-General (Senator Murphy), that he had overwhelming evidence to prove the existence, and the continued existence, of these organisations in Australia. The police went on to say that in response to the urgings of the Attorney-General a group for the special surveillance of Croatian activity had been established which would report fortnightly to the Attorney-General. Then later, as was shown, the reports were stepped up to daily.
In addition to that we have it on record that at that time a brief was sent for legal opinion by the Attorney-General’s Department as to whether the specific evidence in relation to the case against Marie would stand up in a court of law for a prosecution under section 30a of the Crimes Act. On the Department’s advice, I gather, the case was never proceeded with. All this proves that at the time of which the former AttorneyGeneral, Senator Greenwood, was speaking, the organisation which Senator Murphy alleged had been proved to exist, on evidence, had become submerged, in the opinion of the responsible Commonwealth authorities directly advising Senator Greenwood, had ceased to exist and its activities no longer indulged in.
I want to refer now to the document that came into existence in 1972 because this man Marie has been stigmatised by Senator Murphy as a man against whom he has evidence. Senator Murphy referred to the report relating to the Warburton Ranges and what was discovered. I refer to the document of 12th September 1972, a long interim report dealing with Marie by the Commonwealth police authority. In paragraph 8 on page 2 it is said that there was a receipt for money, an address of the Andric brothers, several hand written items and a hand drawn map taken from Marie’s possession. Then there is the advice, with all the responsibility, authority and experience of the Commonwealth police, given in a printed document to my colleague Senator Greenwood stating that Jure Marie will have to be questioned in relation to these documents - that is, any breach of the law in relation to the sending of money and his possible membership of HRB, an organisation which advocates the violent overthrow of the Yugoslav Government. Does that not indicate how devilish is the attitude of Senator Murphy? Instead of taking that confidential recommendation from the Commonwealth police and asking for the next report before he spoke last week if Senator Murphy had evidence on which properly to prosecute Marie, he should have instituted a prosecution. But no, he comes here and uses this material for the purpose of politically accusing Senator Greenwood of want of integrity.
What is the want of integrity? Senator Murphy accused Senator Greenwood of deceiving the nation and actively protecting terrorism. Senator Greenwood replied to questions last year, not as a layman using loose, trashy language, which Senator James McClelland expected to hear from an AttorneyGeneral - perhaps he expected that because of his long acquaintance with Senator Murphy - but as a responsible, knowledgeable man of integrity. Senator Greenwood, when asked a question as to whether he had evidence, answered in the term that truly represents evidence, that is to say, evidence admissible in a court of justice, evidence of a cogency that would persuade a court of justice that the person accused was rightly accused and should be convicted.
Then Senator Murphy has the effrontery to say - forgetting the inappropriateness of it, of course, and forgetting altogether that he is objectively concerned with the peace, order and good government of Australia and our immunity from internal terrorism and prosecution of the law to suppress it - ‘I will examine in detail acts that will convict the previous Government’. What he should have been doing was attempting to analyse the evidence and, if the evidence warranted it, properly to convict any accused person. But Senator Murphy leads off by saying that there is a document which concludes with the statement that some allegation should be taken seriously. The document stated:
In the light of intelligence gathered by this Force over the past 9 months, the allegations of its continued existence by the Yugoslav Government-
That is, the existence of the HRB - must be taken seriously.
Ye gods, Mr President, for Senator Murphy to think that that is a statement of any evidence on which to found a prosecution! Who but a fool or a villain would have refrained from taking this problem seriously heretofore? But that is what Senator Murphy leads off with and he quotes the document in full. Then he has the grace to say that the document is dated 23rd November 1972 - suppressing any reminder that at that time Senator Greenwood was out on the hustings and had relinquished his office. Parliament had risen on 26th October. Then Senator Murphy, having reversed the sequence of events and having quoted a document that never came to Senator Greenwood’s cognisance, went on to introduce a preliminary report which the police had never said constituted evidence worthy to be submitted to a court of law. Without the hindsight of that document, which was never seen by Senator Greenwood, nobody but a fool or a villain would have suggested that it was evidence. All that the Commonwealth police said was that it was a document which contained allegations that must be taken seriously.
Debate interrupted.
page 825
– Order! His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Nauru, is about to retire.
Sitting suspended from 5.45 to 8 p.m.
page 825
Ministerial Statement
Debate resumed.
– Order! Earlier in the evening, because of the visit of the distinguished visitor to whom the. Senate accorded the usual courtesies, Senator Wright was interrupted and deprived of some of the time to which he is entitled in making his speech.
– He has one minute.
– I will decide.
– The accusation against Senator Greenwood is that when he told us that there was no credible evidence in regard to Croatian terrorism that was untrue. I refer to the Commonwealth Police report of 17 th August 1972 which clearly demonstrates that the Commissioner of Police said then that there was no evidence on which to prosecute, specifically in relation to Mr Rover to whom Senator Mulvihill referred. I refer to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation report of 7th September to indicate the basis upon which Senator Murphy makes his allegation. That report states:
Until such time as inquiries in Australia and overseas have been completed it is difficult to provide any useful assessment of the aide memoire. In general terms, it would, appear that none of the material provided would be of any great value as evidence in a legal sense, but rather that it consists of a series of allegations requiring investigation.
Then Senator James McClelland referred to the League of United Croats of Germany. He said that if we look to the report of the Commissioner of Police of 30th May we would find evidence. We find nothing of the sort. There is only a registering there of a belief that meetings were held and that a branch was constituted. So, too, of the Immigration document to which he referred. I have established by a review of the documents which has been necessarily brief that, firstly, Senator Murphy abused the confidence of his position. Being in possession of prosecution evidence he has not prosecuted anyone in the last 4 months during which time that evidence has been in his possession. But now he has used that evidence in a selective fashion for political purposes. Secondly, he has abused his position in relation to ASIO. With 30 police officers he. seized the files of ASIO. Now, struck irrationally, he is alleging a conspiracy in the Public Service. Thirdly, he has thrown together in this statement in an illogical and dishonest fashion a farrago of documents in an attempt to convict not Croatian terrorists but the former Government of an untrue statement. I support the amendment strongly.
– I think it is rather significant that twice during the course of his remarks tonight Senator Wright used the same phrase - an unoriginal one - a farrago of fact and falsehood. This is a reminiscent phrase because it is the very phrase which was used by persons involved in the Royal Commission which resulted from the defection of Vladimir Petrov in 1954. It is rather curious that Senator Wright should appear here tonight as the champion of civil liberties, the champion of non-interference in the political opinions of persons resident in Australia, when one well remembers that he was a member of the Government party which was responsible for the waves of red baiting, of police terrorism, police scrutiny, police investigation and police discrimination which took place right through the 1950s, the 1960s and the (first 3 years of the 1970s. Also, it is rather interesting that the Opposition has been somewhat-
– Professor Orr.
– Order! Professor Orr has nothing to do with Croatian terrorists.
– Also it is significant that the Opposition has been somewhat reluctant to debate the issues which were raised in the statement made to the Senate by the Attorney-General (Senator Murphy). It has been much more inclined to debate what it describes as the raid on the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. It has been very reluctant indeed to debate the hard facts contained in the documents tabled by the Attorney-General. It has been very anxious to debate the alleged improprieties, and not only improprieties but, according to the Opposition, illegalities involved in the so called raid on ASIO. We have heard the question asked: ‘Why did the Attorney-General go to the Canberra office of ASIO?’. It appears to me that the only sensible retort is: ‘Why should he not go to the Canberra office of ASIO?’. Does the Opposition believe that because it was the mainstay of ASIO, because it appointed the top officials, that ASIO is forever its permanent property and that a member of the Australian Labor Party, even the Attorney-General who is the principal law officer of the Commonwealth is acting improperly in visiting ASIO?
Senator Wright has claimed that the Attorney General has acted illegally in going to the office of ASIO and as proof of his criminal behaviour the Attorney-General took with him 27 Commonwealth policemen. In fact, Senator Wright has embroidered a little because he has made them 30 Commonwealth, policemen. The evidence of the illegal behaviour of the Attorney-General is the fact that 27 Commonwealth policemen were present. To me this seems to be saying 2 most extraordinary things. The first is that the Commonwealth police force, engaged in an illegal activity in going into ASIO. Apparently that charge is being levelled against the Commonwealth Police, the Commissioner and the 27 Commonwealth policemen who attended the ASIO office. Apparently the party of law and order now has so little respect for law and order that it wishes to accuse the Commonwealth police of illegal actions. But not only that, what is the Opposition saying about ASIO? Apparently it is saying that the Director-General of Security was himself unaware of the law. Surely if the law is as Senator Wright and his colleagues say it is, then the Director-General of ASIO should have been fully aware of the situation. If warrants were required, as honourable senators opposite so fatuously claim, then why did not the Director-General of Security who should know all these things refuse to hand over the documents, to open the safes and to produce the files? If it were an illegal raid and there were no warrants, why did he not do these things?
Let us see what a serious allegation is being made not only against the Commonwealth police but also against the Director-General of Security and the officers of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Senator Wright is accusing them of not knowing their own Act and of being so weak and so incompetent to defend the nation’s security that when a Minister of a Labor Party government arrives in their office illegally without any authority, they have so little knowledge of the law, of their own charter and of their own rights that the Director-General of Security himself hands over the secret documents - quite illegally - to the Attorney-General. This is the logical consequence of what Senator Wright and his friends are saying. They are saying that not only do we have a gangster Commonwealth police force but also we have a gangster ASIO.
But I do not intend to labour the point of ASIO. I think that the people of Australia are sick and tired of hearing about this so called raid. They want to know what the last Government was doing about bomb throwers. 1 shall say something on the subject of Croatians. I have heard a lot of outrageous statements made by members of the Opposition who say that in saying what we have said and in doing what the Attorney-General has done we have insulted the Croatian community. Apparently the poor little Croatian children who are going to school are being terrorised because of allegations made against certain organisations. This is a most palpable falsehood and red herring. We know that the majority of the Croatian people - not only those in Croatia itself but also those in this country - have nothing whatever to do with these terrorist organisations. Some 80 per cent of the Yugoslav people living in Western Australia, where there is one of the largest Yugoslav communities, are from Croatia; they are Croatians. The overwhelming majority of those people completely repudiate the actions of these Croatian secessionist organisations. If we are insulting Croatians, are we insulting President Tito? President Tito is a Croat. If we are said to be serving President Tito and terrorising the Croats it is rather curious that President Tito himself, the President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, is a Croat. Is he also an anti-Croatian? Is he terrorising himself? Is that what the Opposition is trying to tell us?
We have been told also what fearful things might happen to the immigrants to this country. Apparently not only have the Croatian immigrants been terrified by what has been done but all immigrants have been terrified. They all think they are to be deported because of the dreadful actions of this Labor Government. It is rather unfortunate for Opposition senators that they should have been making precisely that point this day because only this day - I am not divulging any secret knowledge - the parliamentary Labor Party resolved, at the instance of the Government, to amend the Crimes Act to provide that no naturalised Australian citizen shall be deported from this country. For the 23 years that’ the present Opposition was in government it was prepared to deport Australian citizens. Within 4 months the Australian Labor Party is preparing legislation to see that no naturalised Australian citizen shall be deported. Yet the Opposition comes in here and says that we are the people who want to deport Australian citizens.
Some Opposition speakers made reference to the fact that we are to invoke some of the terrible provisions in the Crimes Act, namely, section 30a and section 30c. Opposition senators say that we intend to act under section 30a of the Crimes Act in relation to unlawful organisations and that we intend to legislate for deportation of certain naturalised citizens under section 30c of the Crimes Act. This Act was introduced by a Tory government in 1926 in order to deport officials of the Seamen’s Union of Australia. It is an Act which has been on the statute book for the 23 years that Tory governments have been in office in Australia. This very day the Government announced to the Federal parliamentary Labor Party that it intends to repeal section 30a and section 30c of the Crimes Act. Within 4 months of coming to office we are doing what that last pitiful Government failed to do in 23 years. Yet its supporters have the dishonesty to come in here and accuse us of being the people who will deport those who in some way incur our displeasure, when they are the people who introduced that Act, who kept that Act, and who relied on that Act to terrify certain persons in this country - not those engaged in any terrorist activities but those whose political opinions were unpalatable to them and the people they represent in this Parliament.
It is rather interesting to hear from Senator Greenwood that he was unable to say that there was any credible evidence of terrorist organisations in Australia because he did not have sufficient evidence to lay a prosecution and, presumably, sustain a prosecution in the court for the commission of some offence. According to Senator Greenwood it is quite improper ever to allege that there is an organisation in existence which has certain purposes related, for example, to the use of terrorism or some other unlawful activity unless there is sufficient evidence to prosecute specific individuals. Senator Greenwood has told us this as part of his new posture as a champion of civil liberties and as the upholder of the letter of the law.
If one were to look back to a debate in the Senate not so very long ago - it was less than 3 years ago on 3rd September 1970 - one would find that on that occasion Senator
Greenwood, the civil libertarian, was arguing very strongly against the allowing of an entry visa to Australia to the American comedian, Dick Gregory. What was the argument that civil liberties Greenwood was putting forward on that occasion? I would like to read this in full to give honourable senators an opportunity to listen to it because I do not want to be accused of leaving anything out. It is very revealing as to the attitude of the past Government and of Senator Greenwood in particular. In this debate about whether Mr Dick Gregory should be admitted to Australia, Senator Greenwood said:
Let me mention a few things which have been a part of the Australian scene over the past few months. I will refer specifically to Melbourne. We have had agitation in the streets in Melbourne. We have had people blocking the roadways, denying rights of access to other people, and we have had scuffling and fighting and arrests taking place in the streets. These are not isolated occasions. This appears to be the regular pattern on Friday and Saturday of each week. We have had a bomb thrown into the office of Australian General Electric. We have had a bomb thrown into the office of the Australian Prime Minister.
If 1 may- now quote my own words, I interjected:
What has this to do with Dick Gregory?
Senator Greenwood replied:
I am talking about the scene which we have in Australia at the moment. If Senator Wheeldon will bear with me for a little longer I will link up what I am now saying with what is the justification for this Government’s action. Rather than being interrupted by Senator Wheeldon who would seek to prevent me from giving this catalogue of events which have been occurring 1 will proceed to recite some further matters. There was a building in South Melbourne owned by McPherson’s Ltd which was substantially burnt to the ground.
Senator Kennelly then Interjected:
How do you connect that up?
So it goes on. What was Senator Greenwood doing on that occasion? He was saying that McPherson’s Ltd in South Melbourne was burnt to the ground, that someone threw a bomb here and someone threw a bomb there. What did this establish? This established that there was a terrorist organisation - the Vietnam moratorium movement - which was going to add to its incendiary activities by bringing into this country a black comedian who would have assisted everybody to laugh at the ridiculous government that we had at that time. Senator Greenwood on that occasion did not say: ‘Well, there have been some bombs thrown but we cannot speculate as to who may have thrown them or what connection they may have with anybody because I do not have enough evidence to prosecute anybody in the Court of Petty Sessions or the Criminal Court’. Oh no, certainly not! Senator Greenwood was able to say that the fact that someone had burnt down McPherson’s Ltd, whatever that may be, and thrown a bomb at somebody else was evidence that there was a conspiracy involving the Vietnam moratorium movement and, apparently by a process of osmosis, Mr Dick Gregory over in Chicago. But Senator Greenwood was not content with that because he had many things to say about conspiracies during that period. A little later-
– Order! I wish the honourable senator would inform the Chair and not the people behind him.
– I was endeavouring to do so. What is Senator Greenwood recorded as saying on page 848 of the Senate Hansard for 23rd September 1970? He said:
Yet it ls this Victorian Moratorium Committee which has received the support of the Australian Labor Party and it is this Victorian Moratorium Committee which was led by Dr Cairns and supported by this new publicist, the Federal Secretary of the ALP, Mr Young. It shows that what has been happening in Victoria Is but a charade. … Let it be recognised, let it be identified and let it be consistently known by the people of Australia that that is where the sympathies of the Labor Party lie on this issue. 1 do not want to read the whole speech and weary the Senate, but if anyone disputes what I am saying let him read that speech and he will see that Senator Greenwood was doing precisely what he charges that we have been doing. He has been saying that there was a conspiracy, that an organisation is engaged in criminal and quasi-criminal activities associated with certain individuals in the Labor Party and apparently associated with the Labor Party itself - and now he says that we cannot make any statement about Croatian terrorist organisations unless we actually have evidence to bring a prosecution in the courts. As my colleague Senator James McClelland pointed out this afternoon, Senator Greenwood must have been in a hurry to get that speech written and did not find time to check it: Because there have been prosecutions - 9 in Sydney, I think - including one individual whom I do not want to prejudice in any way. All we know is that he has been prosecuted. The Opposition has been asking why do not we prosecute someone. I tell Opposition senators that 9 persons are being prosecuted, one of whom figured very prominently in the statement made to the Senate last week by Senator Murphy.
I repeat that what the Australian people are interested in are the answers to the specific charges which have been made by Senator Murphy. That there is a large number of documents concerning Croatian organisations in Australia is beyond dispute. As Senator Murphy has said, to produce them all to the Senate would fill the whole of the Senate chamber. Certainly they include documents which would tend to make people believe that perhaps there is nothing to worry about.
– Hear, hear!
– Yes, there are documents here that say that, certainly. There is a multiplicity of documents here, and since Senator Webster says ‘Hear, hear!’ it would seem that he believes those documents but does not believe the other documents. At the risk of boring the Senate, since these charges have not been answered, I should like to read the contents of some of the documents which Senator Webster apparently does not believe.
– Senator Wheeldon, would you allow one question?
– Yes, later. A statement was made by Mr Lynch, who is now competing with Mr Anthony for the Deputy Leadership of the loosely amalgamated Opposition. What did Mr Lynch say on only 3rd December 1969 when he was Minister for Immigration, Minister in charge of a department which had made other submissions on the existence of other Croatian terrorist organisations? And what did Mr Lynch write on 3rd December 1969 to Mr Hughes, who was then the Attorney-General? Mr Lynch expressed his concern:
Not to start but to continue - their terrorist activities-
They are not my words but Mr Lynch’s words. The letter went on: and outrages against representatives of the Yugoslav Government and authority generally in this country. I have reason to believe that the terrorists are endeavouring to create the impression amongst Yugoslav migrants in Australia that the Croatian extremists have the support of significant sections of Australian society and even the Government
That was said by Mr Lynch, the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party. The text goes on:
This afternoon we heard both Senator Greenwood and Senator Wright claim that the documents tabled by Senator Murphy were selective. I suggest that their answers have been selected and I am going to invite somebody from the Opposition side of the Senate to elaborate what Mr Lynch said, to answer what Mr Lynch said and to comment on what Mr Lynch said. Was Mr Lynch stupid? Was he ignorant? Was he ill advised - or was he telling the truth? What is the position of members of the Liberal Party? Do they believe Mr Lynch or do they not believe him? That is the question which I believe they have to answer instead of talking about who went into ASIO offices without search warrants and how many Commonwealth policemen were present. Next, let us look again at what Mr McMahon said in December 1969. Mr McMahon stated that:
The extremists themselves may by now have come to believe that they can act with impunity and that they can therefore, without risk to themselves, step up the level and frequency of violence.
Mr McMahon did not say ‘commence violence’ but ‘step up the level and frequency of violence’ - that is, by the extremists. His letter went on: . . on the only occasion when an offender (who was arrested at the time of committing the offence in the course of a public demonstration) was brought before a court, he was fined an amount which might have left an impression with the Yugoslav missions here, . . . that the Australian authorities did not take the matter seriously.
Mr McMahon was concerned that as a result of certain things that had happened here the Yugoslav authorities might think that the Australian authorities did not take the matter seriously. This was not because the Yugoslav authorities had said to him: ‘The Australian Government does not take the matter seriously’.
– It is the courts that fine people, not the authorities.
– You argue that with Mr McMahon. It has nothing to do with the matter. Mr McMahon has not said that the Yugoslav authorities had made this claim.
What Mr McMahon said was: The situation is such, presumably, that the Yugoslav authorities would be entitled to believe that the Australian Government does not take this matter seriously*. Was Mr McMahon being stupid? Was Mr McMahon ill advised? Was he ignorant? Was he romanticising - or was he right? Neither Senator Greenwood nor Senator Wright has tried to answer that question. What does Senator Greenwood believe about Mr McMahon’s statement? He carefully avoided it, as did Senator Wright, in their alleged answers to what Senator Murphy had said. Apparently not only has Mr McMahon been removed from the leadership, he has been removed from consideration. Honourable senators opposite do not even bother to answer a most serious charge, a most serious suggestion, made by their former leader, the former Prime Minister of this country.
On 18th October 1972 - and this was not so close to the election that the former AttorneyGeneral could not act on it - the Assistant Director of the Special Reports Branch of the Department of Immigration made certain statements. He said:
I believe the strong doubts which exist about past and future involvement in potentially violent Balkan politics should be exercised in favour of Australia and therefore recommend that - a certain person - be deported.
Was any action taken? No action was taken. This was one of the persons named - but has anybody on the Opposition side commented on the statement of the Assistant Director of the Special Reports Branch? Again, this was ignored. They had no confidence apparently in a senior public servant who was appointed by the previous Government. In fact, the answers which were given by Senator Greenwood in which he said that there was no credible evidence of terrorist organisations in Australia, were made as late as 12th September 1972 when he gave answers in this Senate and denied all knowledge of this matter. He attempted by a rather disreputable legalistic device to say that he was being asked something which he was not being asked.
Nobody had asked the former AttorneyGeneral, Senator Greenwood, whether he had information in his possession which would lead to the prosecution of a particular individual under the Crimes Act or under any part of the law of the Commonwealth. Noone had asked him that. He was asked whether he was aware of the existence of organisations in this country which did have as a goal the use of force in relation to certain matters in which they were interested in Croatia, and his answer was, no, that he did not have sufficient evidence to prosecute any individual. His answer was that there was no evidence of the existence of these organisations. This answer came from a Minister in a government which for years had told us about the existence of communist conspiracies, moratorium conspiracies and all sorts of left wing conspiracies without any person ever being prosecuted for anything. Members of that Government were perfectly satisfied that these organisations did not exist. It was said that there was no evidence whatsoever of the existence of these organisations. That is clearly palpable nonsense. For example, if in this country there was a Provisional Sinn Fein organisation in existence, as well there may be-
– There is - the IRA. It was said on television the other night.
- Senator McManus assures me that there is.
– The Irish Republican Army.
– I know what IRA stands for. I bow to the superior knowledge of Senator McManus who says that there is a Provisional Sinn Fein organisation in Australia. In that case, could anyone deny that it was an organisation associated with the use of terror in Northern Ireland? Of course not, because the Provisional Sinn Fein is the political arm of the Provisional Irish Republican Army which is linked with the use of violence and terrorism in Northern Ireland.
– Just because they have the same name?
– It seems that Senator McManus knows very little about contemporary Irish history. He may be much better informed about the time of the famine.
– I know more than you do.
– I do not think so, because if you say it is only the same name, without digressing into modern Irish history, I think you should look at the statements of the Provisional Sinn Fein. Senator McManus will find that its members say quite openly that they are the political arm of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. It would be foolish for anybody to deny that there was an organisation in Australia connected with organisations involved in the use of terrorism in Northern Ireland. It is not the same thing as saying that there is some person in Australia who is engaged in terrorism. It is not the same thing as saying that particular acts of terrorism have been committed by any member of the organisation. Clearly, if there is a Provisional IRA or Provisional Sinn Fein in Australia, there is an organisation related to the use of terrorism. That answer would have to be given if the question were asked and not a silly answer about not having enough evidence to prosecute an individual.
The Government will not be distracted from the preservation of the lives and safety of the Australian people by red herrings and dishonest answers such as those which have been given by honourable senators who are now in Opposition. We know very well that in past years throughout Australia bombs have been exploded; people have been killed and injured; people have been threatened. We intend to stop it, not by breaching civil liberties or by breaking the law but in the spirit of the actions which we have taken this very day in seeing that naturalised Australian citizens shall not be deported under sections 30a and 30c of the Crimes Act. Those provisions shall be removed.
The Australian people know from 23 years experience how much they can expect in the way of civil liberties and civil rights from the Liberal Party, the Democratic Labor Party and the Country Party. They are learning what they can expect from the Australian Labor Party by the action we have already taken. At the same time, I commend this to the party of law and order: We do not intend to allow this country to be a haven for terrorists, bombers and murderers.
– All kinds of allegations have been levelled against a variety of people in the course of this debate but nobody has named the really guilty men in regard to the Croatian question. They are David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson, the 3 men who dominated the conference which in 1919 parcelled out Europe, at the end of World War I. I think the history is instructive because so much has been said by Government supporters to suggest that the Croatian people are simply terrorists by nature and are engaging in crimes and terrorism without any cause or responsibility. In 1919 the Croatian people approached that conference in the belief that the war had been fought for the rights of small nations, and in the belief that the leaders of the democratic world at the time believed in their own slogan that government was by the consent of the governed. On that occasion it was determined that that slogan did not apply to small nations in central Europe.
Because the Serbian people had shown great heroism and had made great sacrifices it was determined that they should be rewarded without regard to the rights of other subject peoples. A country called Yugoslavia was formed. If you speak to the people there they will deny that they are Yugoslavs because Yugoslavia was formed by a forcible incorporation of large numbers of Croats, Albanians, Slovenes and Macedonians into a greater Serbian state. If you ask the people of that country whether they are Yugoslavs, they will say that they are Serbs, Albanians, Slovenes or Macedonians. When a country has forcibly incorporated within its boundaries people who do not belong to it, the foundation is laid not for peace but for war.
The Croats were a western European people. They were forcibly placed under the rule of the Serbs who are an eastern European people. The Croats were largely Catholic but there was a sizeable minority of Moslems who had been left there from the days when they were ruled by the Turks. Therefore there were religious differences in the country which were just as bad as are found today in Londonderry and Belfast. In addition Croatia was a wealthy and prosperous country. Under the rule of the new government it was found that the wealth of Croatia was being drained off in the direction of the other portions of Yugoslavia.
There was a discrimination to a degree against the Croats. In the ‘American Union Journal’ which I have here it is pointed out that last year 40 per cent of the unemployed in Yugoslavia were Croats although they are only 22 per cent of the people in the whole country. When it was determined that there should be some kind of a legal government in Croatia under a system of federalism, which Tito tried to introduce, a system was brought in under which, although the Croats were about 90 per cent of the people in Croatia and the others were only about 9 per cent, that 9 per cent should have equal electoral rights with the 90 per cent formed by Croats. The introduction of the system was accompanied by measures to destroy the Croat Press and the schools and culture of the Croats. The result was continual trouble and rebellion. In 1928 the leader of the Croatian parliamentarians and 2 of his chief supporters were shot dead in the Parliament. A few years later the king, the leader of the Serbs, was assassinated in France.
– Who did that?
– I do not know, but in view of the action taken in 1919 by the’ Treaty of Versailles the foundation was laid for that kind of event in the country which was formed under its terms. Continually there has been war. There have been murders and massacres in that country. The situation in Yugoslavia in the last year or two has become so serious that it is confidently predicted that following the death of President Tito, who is over 80 years of age, there will be a blood bath. Already, there has been grave trouble in Croatia and other parts of the country. There have been strikes of students and of workers. Not only have the anti-communist Croats been involved but also the Croatian Communist Party has been involved in attacks upon the Government of Yugoslavia, so much so that President Tito called the leaders of the Croatian Communist Party before him and informed them that they must all resign. He deprived them all of their positions.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has entered into this welter of trouble. It has never reconciled itself to the fact that Marshall Tito took Yugoslavia out of its sphere of influence. The result has been that the Soviet Union has offered assistance to the Croatian people in order to throw off the yoke of those who are running the country at the present time.
– Were they offered assistance by the Soviet Union?
– I know from speaking to Croatians that they have been offered the assistance of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union hopes that when Marshall Tito dies it will be able to take advantage of what follows. Probably - I would say almost certainly - Soviet armies will enter the country, and 1 predict that every endeavour will be made to incorporate it into the group of countries which at present are under the influence of the Soviet Union.
– We should not encourage that?
– I am not encouraging it. But if you shut your eyes to the fact that the people of Croatia have had genuine grievances and that no attempt has been made to remedy them, you shut your eyes to what is an obvious facet of human nature. When you treat people in that way, deprive them of their liberty, try to destroy their culture and deny them any adequate form of representation, obviously violent elements in that community will come to the front, as has happened here.
There are between 150,000 and 200,000 Croats in Australia today. A very considerable number of them came to this country as refugees. Many of them fled from Croatia. Even after Marshal Tito set up his Government, large numbers continued to flee from Croatia as refugees. When they came to this country, having experienced communism and a denial of human rights, they set up a liberation organisation. It is not just the Croats who have done that. Every group that has come to Australia from a communist country has a liberation organisation. The Latvians, the Lithuanians, the Estonians, the Rumanians, the Hungarians and the Bulgarians even, all have their organisations which call for the freedom of their countries. It is quite legitimate that they should have such organisations, provided they do not resort to violence.
I emphasise that provided they do not resort to violence they have the same right to live here and advocate the freedom of their countries as Mazzini, the Italian patriot, had in the middle years of the last century. They have the same right as Karl Marx who was allowed to live in Great Britain. They have the same right as Marshal Tito. When Tito was a young man he went to live in Russia. He formed a liberation organisation in Russia, organised for the purpose of overthrowing the then government of Yugoslavia. What Marshal Tito has asked through his ambassador in Australia is that we in Australia should prevent Croats here from doing what he did in Russia when he was a revolutionary and not the Marshal in charge of the government of his country. I repeat: There is nothing under our free democratic institution to stop people from forming an organisation to advocate the liberation of their country from communism, fascism or any other undesirable form of government. Most Croats in Australia are not terrorists. Ninety-nine per cent of them are as law-abiding as anybody in the Senate today.
– What about the remaining 1 per cent?
– In my view, the group to which honourable senators opposite have been referring would not even be 1 per cent at the most. But the attempt has been made by left wing forces in this country that have lines of communication with people such as Dr J. F. Cairns in the Australian Labor Party to present this issue as one in which the overwhelming number of the Croatian people are guilty of terrorism. They have been found guilty by association.
Let us look at the facts. We have been given piles of documents which contain statements that the Croats have formed organisations of various titles directed to the liberation of their country. It has been said that certain people have been involved in bombings. Nothing has been presented to indicate that the people concerned in the bombings were engaged in those bombings for political reasons. On the contrary, in one of the most publicised cases the Premier of New South Wales, Mr Askin, said that his advice from his police force was that that bombing was a personal bombing between 2 groups. Mr Acting Deputy President, you will notice that the members of the Australian Labor Party are interjecting. They are always quiet when one of their own supporters is speaking, but they always endeavour to prevent an opponent from being heard. Members of the Australian Labor Party believe in free speech for its own supporters only and for its own case only.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Wilkinson) - Order! Honourable senators will cease interjecting.
– It ill behoves them to talk about fascist methods when they employ the fascist methods of trying to drown out the voice of others.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENTOrder!
– I rise to order. Mr Acting Deputy President, there has been a constant interruption from the Government benches during Senator McManus’ speech. I think that you should call Government senators to order.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT -
Order! Senator Byrne, I am on my feet. I do not propose to hear you while I am standing. If you have a point of order to make or if you wish to make any statement I will call you when I sit down. I do not want Senator McManus to speak either while I am standing. I understand that Senator Byrne rose, but I rose at the same time. I now call Senator Byrne.
– Mr Acting Deputy President, at the time I rose it was my impression that you were still sitting. I did not see you stand. Of course, I would pay you the courtesy of giving you the necessary precedence if you were standing and I would not attempt to interrupt you. But when I rose, Senator McManus was standing. It was my impression that it was only after I rose that you rose also. The point of order I am taking is that there has been constant interruption from the Government benches of Senator McManus* speech. I suggest that the honourable senators concerned should be called to order.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT -
Senator McManus, I am on my feet again. At the time Senator McManus was speaking I called the Senate to order. I was ignored. I was at the point of rising when Senator Byrne rose. I ask honourable senators to refrain from this considerable interjection which has been going on and allow Senator McManus to continue his speech.
– Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I want to emphasise that no Party will oppose more firmly the use of violence for political or other reasons in this country than the Australian Democratic Labor Party. Where it can be proved that people have been guilty of violence or of inculcating violence, we will be as prepared as any other Party to take action in regard to that matter. Our party is opposed to what has gone, on in the Senate during the past 4 weeks. A principle of British and Australian justice has always been that people are innocent until they are found guilty, but on this occasion in this Parliament, under privilege, the Croatian people as a group and certain individuals have been declared guilty without trial. I was shocked to see some of the statements which appeared in the Press and which suggested that the word ‘Croat’ is synonymous with terrorist. We have heard organisations named. It has been said that there are
Croat terrorist organisations. The AttorneyGenera) named certain organisations, but he provided mo link with any act of violence. He said that there have been acts of violence, these are Croat organisations, therefore Croat organisations are terrorist organisations which indulge in violence.
The challenge has been issued - I issue it again - if he has evidence which will stand in court he should prosecute the people accused of violence, whether they are Croats or people of any other nationality. But do not find them guilty, as Senator Murphy attempted to when J asked him a question last week. I asked: ‘Is it a fact that there is no tribunal or no court in this country to which these people whom you have attacked under the cloak of privilege can have resort to clear their names and to determine their innocence?’ Senator Murphy replied: ‘We will have to think about that’. In this country large numbers of people have been declared without trial to be guilty of terrorism.
Senator Jessop - I take a point of order. Mr Acting Deputy President, I heard your ruling a while ago. Senator Milliner who is hiding behind his newspaper was interjecting persistently while we were trying to hear Senator McManus. I suggest that Senator Milliner is out of order.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Wilkinson) - Order! Senator Milliner was not intruding on my hearing of Senator McManus’s contribution to the debate. Senator Jessop, I point out to you that as you are in close proximity to Senator McManus your loudspeaker is not switched on. Therefore, you do not have the assistance of the speaker. That is why Senator McManus sounds a bit fainter to you. That is part of the set up here. I ask Senator McManus to continue.
– I point out as an example of the manner in which the Croat people have been smeared the statement which appeared in a considerable number of newspapers and which obviously emanated from the office of the Attorney-General to the effect that it had evidence that 200 Croat terrorists were on their way to Yugoslavia to indulge in violence and terrorism. I asked the AttorneyGenera! about this statement. He said: ‘I never made any such statement, and I do not know who did’. I have sufficient regard for Australian pressmen to say that if they said that they had been told that 200 terrorists were on their way to Yugoslavia they got it from some person close to the AttorneyGeneral and in whom they had confidence.
I have spoken to some Croats and I have said: “This Government says that it intends to probe the whole matter.’ My advice to them was to co-operate with the Government in probing it. Their request is for some form of justifiable or reputable inquiry to be held at which they can appear, examine the charges against them and give evidence to prove that they are innocent. I believe that they are entitled to that, because the charges that have been made against them have been made in the Senate. The charges have been made under privilege, and Australian law does not allow any action to be taken against the people who are attacking the Croats. They ask firstly, for the opportunity to clear their names and, secondly, that when the inquiry is held they be given the opportunity to put the evidence that is in their hands of the existence in this country of a counter-revolutionary agent provocateur organisation. They would like the opportunity to give evidence against Mr Jurjevic and Zlatko Lazic who they say is masquerading in this country as a diplomat at the Yugoslav Embassy but who is the representative in this country of tt e Yugoslav secret police. The request of the C oats is on 2 bases - firstly, that they be given he chance to clear their names and, secondly, hat they be given the opportunity to give < evidence about the secret police organisations which have been here and which have been responsible for a certain degree of the violence.
I have heard about the groups of young fellows who went to Yugoslavia. I have the greatest doubt in my mind as to the bona fides of some of the people who organised them to go there. Why was it that these young fellows who thought that they were going over to free their country could have been organised to go to Yugoslavia, and when they crossed the border the police were sitting there waiting for them? The police knew when they were coming, where they were coming, what they intended to do and everything about them. I regard with the utmost suspicion the activities in this country of the Yugoslav secret police who have been sent here, in many cases, as agents provocateurs. I appreciate the view of the Croatian people that they want an opportunity to give evidence before a proper tribunal to show that these people are responsible to a large degree for a good deal of the violence.
The only other matter to which 1 refer is the matter of violence. Let us not pretend that the record m this country in regard to violence is clear or that the Croats are the only people who resort to that kind of thing. 1 live in Melbourne. The Federated Ships Painters and Dockers Union of Australia is a trade union. The Australian Council of Trade Unions has control over it. The union is affiliated with the Australian Labor Party. Yet for several years there has been a reign of terror in that union. Persons have been murdered in full view of 30 or 40 people, and not one of those people said he saw what happened. People have disappeared. Today members of that union are living in homes around which high walls with barbed wire entanglements at the top have been erected. They have savage Alsatian dogs to protect them. That union would be in the No. 1 position in this country today so far as violence is concerned. What about when the South African rugby team came to Australia? Some of the most determined advocates of law and order and some of the most determined opponents of terrorism and violence were to be seen urging on a lot of other people to commit acts of terrorism and violence. In relation to Vietnam, people said: ‘Do not import outside troubles here’. Who imported the Vietnam troubles here? There is no doubt who did.
Violence is one of the worst things in any country. The Government, whether it is Labor of liberal, is entitled to the full support of each party, including our Party, if it desires to take strong action against violence. I believe that the laws in this country have always been strong enough to deal with violence. This country has never before had to deal with violence. It has never had to issue numerous attacks under shelter of privilege upon people and then leave them in the position of being unable to defend themselves or to prove themselves innocent. This country has never before introduced the secret police system of going to people’s homes at 5 a.m. without a warrant, kicking at the door, entering and saying: ‘We are going to search your home’.
Senator Mulvihill - You did it for draft resisters. (Government senators interjecting) -
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Wilkinson) - Order! I have called “Order* 3 times and I have been disobeyed. I shall not call ‘Order’ again. Will both sides of the Senate realise that this debate has to be conducted with a certain amount of decorum. Senator McManus, you have 3 minutes remaining for your speech.
– I was one of those - and I believe my Party held this view too - who objected to that kind of thing being done, whether it was done to draft resisters or whether it was done to Croats. I do not believe that we in this country have room for that kind of action. I do not believe that we want the secret police method of kicking down people’s doors at night, entering without any authority and claiming the right to search their homes. When the Government did that, it proved the truth of the statement which Mr Whitlam made in Adelaide last year when he said that he had to admit that there was a streak of authoritarianism inside his own Party.
I believe that our laws are quite adequate and that our police force is quite adequate. We have not just one security organisation, ASIO, but we have about 3 security organisations. I think when the situation of adopting this kind of security police approach was reached with the Attorney-General of our country raiding his own security organisation, we made ourselves the laughing stock of the world. We produced a situation where no security organisation in any other country will ever trust any confidential information to the Australian security service because it has been destroyed by its own Government.
– I wish to give my personal views tonight as an Independent. Sometimes I am most thankful that I am an Independent. I feel that discussion of this matter is at the stage where it is becoming a political football. Senator McManus said a little while ago in his address that he felt that the statement which appeared in the Press about 200 people being charged with terrorist activities or being described as terrorists resulted from some information which had come from somewhere. I wonder whether we can accept everything that the newspapers print? Personally, I do not. I know that the newspapers misrepresent people. They have misrepresented me on occasions and I am sure that other honourable senators will agree that the same thing has happened to them. By changing a word here or there, the newspapers can create the wrong impression of what a person has said.
Let me give an example of how the news media does this. The other night I watched the Australian Broadcasting Commission program ‘Four Corners’. A segment in that program involved an interview with a young university student about the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. He was so hesitant in speaking that it was obvious that he was a little frightened about the whole situation. But to add a nice touch to the interview, this ABC program showed policemen trotting around trees to the background music of ‘The Teddy Bear’s Picnic’, the first line of which, I am reminded, is ‘If You Go Down in the Woods Today’. If that is not making a joke of a serious matter, I do not know what is. Therefore, I ask: Can we believe what we see, hear or read through the media? I do not think we can.
In this chamber we must stick to facts. I have stood up here for the previous AttorneyGeneral, Senator Greenwood, and I am standing up now for the present Attorney-General, Senator Murphy. I will stand in this House in support of any man if I feel that he is being wrongly accused of some act which in his own mind he was justified in doing because of what he thought was right. When Senator Greenwood was Attorney-General I believe he acted as he thought right at that time. Senator Murphy, as our present AttorneyGeneral, also has acted as he thought right. We should not throw stones at either of them.
– Who started throwing stones?
– If that is not throwing stones, I do not know what it is.
– I said: Who started throwing stones?
- Mr Acting Deputy President, am I not supposed to address the chair?
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Wilkinson) - Yes.
– I say that the present situation is getting completely out of hand. I repeat what I said on an earlier occasion in the course of question time: At this time the present Attorney-General is under fire for something he did that, in his own opinion, was done to protect the public and a visiting dignitary. I repeat that if he had not taken those precautions and someone had been killed or injured we would now be asking him why he had not taken those precautions. Prevention is better than cure. I personally feel that if the police or the Attorney-General has any suspicion about any person in Australia, whether that person is an Australian or a foreigner, who may be proposing to carry out an act of terrorism, that person should be stopped before that act is committed, not after it is carried out.
I congratulate the Attorney-General on his action. I feel that he was actually seeking to protect people from a possible event similar to that which happened many months ago in Sydney when bombs were placed in a public area. Such acts can occur if we do not have the courage of our convictions. I feel that the actions of the Attorney-General deserve nothing but praise because he endeavoured, as Attorney-General, on his own assessment of the situation to stop something before it started. I think Senator Greenwood will agree with me when I say that I have stood in support of him as I will stand in support of any man in this Senate if I think he is being unjustifiably accused. Perhaps we , have ourselves to blame for these problems. I feel that perhaps ASIO has not been doing the job for which it is being paid. I feel, as I am sure other honourable senators do, that the police at times are quite lax in their , job. and sometimes will, not follow up leads given to them by the public. . They receive so many false leads that they give up. I .consider that an organisation like ASIO should not take a chance in respect of any situation,. It should examine and check every possibility. If there are any doubts, action must be taken to stop any act before an incident occurs, not after it has happened. That action may include a raid. .
I say that the present laws in - Australia regarding explosives are absolutely shocking and outdated. From memory, anyone who bought an explosive, such as gelignite, many years ago had to put that explosive in a locked box, then place it inside another locked box and finally place it in a locked shed marked ‘Danger-Explosives’. That is not happening in Australia today; except in the case of mining organisations. We are too lax. I have a question to ask the Attorney-General tomorrow on this point. I will ask him whether he will endeavour to arrange for an announcement to be made in the media asking people to return any explosives that they have to the nearest police station. Many people do not know that if gelignite is left lying around it can become highly dangerous, more so than if it is in new form. I am sure that there are old explosives of all kinds throughout Australia. Even shotgun cartridges can be highly dangerous because they contain explosives. I feel that this situation results from our laxity.
Anyone of doubtful character who may even have been thinking of starting terrorism should never have been considered as a potential migrant for Australia - never, right from the start. I think that probably our Department of Immigration was lax right from the start. I am not saying that any of our immigrants has been or will be guilty of terrorism but we should have no doubt about anyone; we should be absolutely sure that a migrant has no record of terrorism or acts of violence. If we do not make sure of that, it is our own fault. 1 know very well that there are many Australians who conduct acts of violence. We cannot crow. I say that we should tighten up our own laws at this time and ensure, to the best of our ability, that we stop these things before they start. I must say that the recent raids on premises were conducted because the police, or someone who instructed them, thought that there was a reasonable cause for those raids. We would be silly to ourselves if we tried to stop that kind of thing. We should allow that kind of thing to go on because by doing so we are protecting ourselves. We are arguing about this matter at present, or discussing it, because not one of us has been hurt personally. If the wife of one of us had been hurt by a bomb during one of these terrorist acts we would feel like going out and shooting someone. Please, let us have a little sense and realise that not only the present Attorney-General but the previous AttorneyGeneral did what they thought was right at the time. Do not let us criticise them. Let them understand that we are trying to ensure, with their help, that no people in Australia are hurt.
– During the past 5 weeks the Australian people and the members of this Parliament have been gravely misled and mischievously deceived by the Attorney-General (Senator Murphy). The Minister whose responsibility it is to administer the law impartially, to ensure that the great principle of the rule of law that a person is innocent until proven guilty is upheld, the man who is charged over all others with impartiality, has shown a political bias, a willingness to use and abuse parliamentary privilege and to bring into this Parliament selected documents to serve his own political purposes. At the same time he has retained from the Parliament and the people of Australia selected documents which would prejudice his purpose and destroy his argument. He has brought in documents which under the privilege of Parliament would create a Moscow trial of people who have not been charged and who have not been found guilty, and at the same time he has retained from Parliament vital matters which could have ensured a more objective view. This is the man who faces an amendment moved to the motion before the Senate which reads in part that ‘the Attorney-General, Senator Murphy, does not deserve the confidence of this Senate’.
These are grave matters. They are grave because the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Whitlam, has made it clear that in all but one respect at least he entirely supports and agrees with what Senator Murphy has done. Senator Murphy has told us that the Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet are aware and approve of every single action that he has taken. Incidentally, he assured the Senate that the Prime Minister was aware of why he went to the Canberra office of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and of why he went to the Melbourne office of that body. He has told us that the Prime Minister agreed and supported his action. Nevertheless, I want to read from a report of the Prime Minister’s Press conference. It is reported that the Prime Minister was asked this question:
Senator Murphy rests his case on visiting the ASIO headquarters in Melbourne on the basis of the discovery of this document in ASIO office in Canberra. We still do not know why he made the midnight visit to the ASIO offices in Canberra. Can you tell us why?
The Prime Minister is reported as having answered by saying:
I do not know why. . . .
If the Prime Minister is right then what Senator Murphy said to this Senate is wrong and misleading.
Let us look at what has happened. It is instructive for the people of Australia to look at what happened in the last 5 weeks. This incident started with an apparently innocent little Dorothy Dix question engendered in this place by an honourable senator sitting on my left flank - I think by Senator Gietzelt or another honourable senator - who asked something about Croatian terrorists. The Attorney-General said that very shortly he would be tabling a statement on Croatian terrorism. A week passed and nothing happened. Another week passed and nothing happened. So it went on and it became clear that the Attorney-General had found, on the evidence he had, that in fact he could not bring evidence forward so to do. So was contrived one of the greatest deceptions ever tried on the Australian public.
Firstly we had the outrageous melodrama - I put it at that level - of the visit of the Yugoslav Prime Minister. If it was necessary to create an iron curtain around the Yugoslav Prime Minister, as the AttorneyGeneral said, because the risks were so great, if it was necessary for him to be denied meeting this Parliament and conferring with the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Snedden), if it was necessary that he be denied doing all those things that a leader of another country normally is bound to do if he visits Australia, then it was the bounden duty of the AttorneyGeneral not to go ahead with the visit. If the threat was so real that the visit had to be emasculated then it should never have occurred. It was a travesty of a visit. When Mr Whitlam was Leader of the Opposition he was paid the courtesy, always, of being invited to have discussions with such a person. The normal parliamentary functions were held.
Does the Attorney-General suggest that we could not guard this Parliament? What a pantomime we have seen. Why is it that at this moment the security risk in this chamber is so much less than it was 4, 5, 6 or 7 days ago? In this chamber we had what could have been the third siege of Wounded Knee. Wherever we turned around this chamber and in the corridors of Parliament there were security police, plain clothes police and uniformed police. If the threat was so real last week and the week before, why is it not just as real today? What has happened in the last 2 or 3 weeks to have changed that situation? What has happened that makes today so different from 3 days ago? If something has happened why have not the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General got to their feet and told the Australian people? We have faced a most impossible position and the Parliament of this democracy was faced with something like the siege of Wounded Knee.
I think that every honourable senator here would reject the idea that we cannot safely walk down a corridor in this building unless we are surrounded by plain clothes policemen. We have heard talk of bulletproof glass and of threats. Does anybody say that I exaggerate when I say that in . the ‘ corridor between this chamber and my office there were some 6 plain clothes policemen? This was all part of the melodrama. The aim was to say to the Australian people that the Yugoslav Prime Minister was in such mortal danger that those things were necessary; that what the Attorney-General was going to say about Croatian terrorism was. true and that others have lied about it. This is so because if the threat had been real the . Yugoslav Prime Minister ought not to have come here. He should have had a proper state visit and the parliamentarians of this and the other chamber should not have been denied the ordinary courtesy of a state visit. In fact it was a great melodrama, a grotesque charade - the worst that has been seen in this country.
But after that there was still not enough evidence, so what did the Attorney-General do? Without asking his Prime Minister, although he is beholden under the law of the land so to do, without asking anyone, he made 2 raids. The first was on the Canberra office of ASIO and the second was on the Melbourne office. What did he do then? He used Commonwealth police and seized files. He sealed files. What was his purpose in doing this? He has not answered that. For days and days in this chamber we asked him: What did you get from the Canberra office of ASIO?’ The Minister said something like this: I cannot tell you. If I disclose the substance of the document that led me to make my visit to Melbourne, it would endanger national security; it would be of an order of endangering national security.’ After he had been interrogated day after day, what in fact has transpired? What has transpired is that the significant part of the piece of paper that led him in his hysterical raid in Melbourne, in his hysterical melodrama, was in fact a copy of a report written by an ASIO officer, subjectively describing his impressions of an interdepartmental committee meeting.
– How do you know?
– I am grateful for the interjection. I will tell Senator O’Byrne how I know. It is because Senator Murphy in this chamber said so, and so did the Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) in the other place. I rely on them, at least in regard to this matter, to state what are the facts. It was a total deception of this chamber to say that the disclosure of the motive in that document would threaten the security of Australia. All it did was to produce a second melodrama. All it did then was to have a Moscow trial. These people talk of freedom. What happened then? Immediately on reading that memorandum and on his own say-so, without consulting the Prime Minister - even though the inter-departmental committee involved the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Defence, his own Department and ASIO, and even though a breach of this would cut across the whole of Cabinet protocol - Sir Galahad, on his little white horse, goes to Melbourne and raids ASIO.
What does the Attorney-General do? He says: T judged this. I do not need a Moscow trial. I do not need the Prime Minister to set up a committee. I judged that these senior officers of the departments were conspiring to hold information from me’. Unless the AttorneyGeneral had prejudged that, he would have halted and taken stock. Unless he had made that prejudgment, he would have gone to the Prime Minister and said: ‘We have got a problem here. Let us have a look at this’. But not he. He did a Moscow trial, and so indeed did his own Prime Minister. Now the Prime Minister is talking - and I believe Senator Wheeldon also talked - of Petrov. It is shades of 1955 - talk of a conspiracy. It is the political paranoia of the echoes of Dr Evatt down the years - it is a conspiracy against Labor! Now who are the conspirators? Not ASIO, but wicked public servants. Honourable senators opposite say: ‘We, the Government of the day, the defenders of civil liberty, will prejudge it. We will say to the people of Australia: “I did this in the prejudgment that these public servants deliberately set about to reach a judgment, trying to conspire, trying to hide something” ‘. This is one of the ugliest, most unstable, most reckless and most irresponsible actions of any Minister who has been in this Parliament and it deserves the vote of no confidence which is implicit in the amendment.
Why in fact did they do this? I am grateful to Senator Wheeldon because we have to go back to the Petrov incident of 1955 to find out the reason. The fact is that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was formed by Mr Chifley and Dr Evatt with principles laid down by them, principles copied or blueprinted from MI5 in England. The body was set up to be removed from day to day partisan politics. This body, ASIO, did a first class job for Australia and for the free world because by securing the defection of Petrov it revealed for the free world a volume of information concerning Russian espionage and subversion throughout the free world that enabled very important preventive and defensive steps to be taken. Since then the political paranoia of the left wing of the Labor Party and of those who march even to its Left have driven it into an insensate hatred of ASIO to the point where at the Federal Conference of the Labor Party in Launceston an attempt was made to abolish ASIO and where, in fact, the Minister in question came up with a solution to save ASIO. But now we see why. He saved it so that it could be turned into a political police force.
Lest anyone should consider that this is in any way an exaggeration, I want to say that ASIO has been one of the outstanding security organisations in the free world, as judged by the countries of the free world. It is not in any way a police force; it is not in any way a law enforcement body - that is not its job. Its job is to collect information on sabotage, espionage and subversion. Its job is to have such qualities of integrity that, as judged within Australia and without, other nations will freely exchange their most confidential information with us and so that informants in this country will willingly give ASIO information in the conscious knowledge that no-one will know from whom the information has come.
So the Chifley Government set up - and we continued - an organisation, which removed ASIO from ministerial direction, until the other day. The Chifley Government said: ‘We are not going to have raids on ASIO by Ministers, by police or by anyone else. We are not going to have documents violated. We are not going to have people looking to see who are the informants, who are the sources, because the day that documents are wilfully removed from ASIO is the day when other countries and our own informants will cease to trust Australia and we will have no ASIO, no security organisation - to the great detriment of this country*. By one wilful, hysterical act our Attorney-General has destroyed confidence in our security organisation among people in other countries and has put in peril throughout Australia people, many of whom are very brave people, who maintain a flow of information.
Indeed, there are many people to the Left of the political spectrum in this country who would see a raid on ASIO being devised for the very reason of getting the names of informants so that punitive action can be taken. That is an ugly thought. Nevertheless it is imperative that nobody - not even a Minister - should be able to get to ASIO’s files. But despite those principles which are enshrined here and in Great Britain, the Minister violated those things and has never said why he did so. For a man to do this and to refuse to say why is for the man to lose the confidence of this Parliament. If he has a justifiable reason, let him stand up and say so. But the Attorney-General says to us: ‘I have full confidence in the Director-General of ASIO, Mr Barbour. No, it is not true that he withheld information from me; there is no question of that. He never refused me information at all’. So it is not that. Is it that there is a traitor, a spy or a counter agent in ASIO from whom we have to seal the files? Are the files still sealed? Does the Attorney-General still have his own political hand on these dossiers? All these things are not known. While they are not known, the political taint of partisan fear will be on this Parliament and throughout the land.
The Attorney-General has been asked to answer some very serious questions, but he has refused to answer them. Of course it is the Petrov decision. It is helped along by the fact that the Attorney-General has some other local difficulties with his own preselection at the moment, and I have no doubt that an interest by the left wing of his Party in his own doings would help him along. So the Attorney-General has many motives for doing what he has done. But these are not the kind of motives that the chief law-making officer of this country can be inspired with, if this country is to have the rule of law. But let us look at this. What is the effect of this? What it means is that the Attorney-General of the day has set the precedent that we can, to the great prejudice of every individual in this country, bring in at the will of the Government, at the will of the Attorney-General, and table under privilege in this Parliament, any document from ASIO or from the Commonwealth police which the Attorney-General, by his whim, sees fit to table. He seeks to blackguard, to blackmail and to blacken the character of any person in Australia. He prejudges them before they have any charge at all, even though there is no case and no charge against them and never will be a charge against them, and even though there may well lie on those files information which refutes overwhelmingly the claims which are put. Today Senator Greenwood demonstrated that if ever there was an example of an Attorney-General using police state methods we had it in Senator Murphy’s speech which was delivered here a week ago and in the documents which he tabled. He deliberately chose some which would help his case, which would damn those he wanted to damn and protect those he wanted to protect. . He withheld, he produced and he breached security; he invaded the whole of the ASIO files.
Is this to be? Let me put this .on challenge. The people of Australia would-be enormously interested to know,, what files ASIO and the Commonwealth Police have .on Wilfred Burchett. But in recent days we have been very tender in relation to Wilfred Burchett, have we mot? Why do we not table the files on Wilfred Burchett? I do not ask that this be done. I do not ask that the Government go to ASIO and bring those files here. On the contrary. But it is good enough to.- table documents on some Croat or some Yugoslav whose dignity, rights, freedom and liberty are at least equal to those of Mr Burchett or any honourable senator here o.r elsewhere. It is outrageous to believe that one -man’s freedom is in any way less than another’s. But this is what we are doing now. While we continue this we allow an Attorney-General at his whim to come in here and, by selectivity, do a Goebbels act as in a police state. These are not. extravagant words.
Let me demonstrate how this selectivity works. Through the ASIO files runs a very strong theme. It is this: Primarily, ASIO believes that acts of violence - that is, acts of bombing and acts of physical violence in Australia - presumably by Croatians are not of themselves an initiative but are a response to counter-violence. This is. perfectly and abundantly clear from the documents. But where In Senator Murphy’s submission was this one demonstrated? In the ASIO documents which were put down as the background documents the theme clearly runs that all Croats in Australia are freedom fighters. All of them would want Croatia free. Most of them, perhaps foolishly, would support freedom fighters. There is a significant statement that none of them has any desire to hurt Australia or Australians in any way. The basic document states that there are 2 directions in which their revolutionary and violent activities will be directed. One is against the consulates and embassies in Australia of the Yugoslav Government and the other is against the regime in Yugoslavia. Why was this not brought out?
I will now take point by point to show that there is the strongest possible case, by inference, that the violence which has occurred here is a violence of response and mot of initiative. Why did the Attorney-General not look to initiative? As we are looking to acts of omission and commission why did the Attorney-General not respond while on his feet or over the past 3 weeks to a question which I directed to him prior to the visit of the Yugoslav Prime Minister? I asked him then about a statement made, by President Tito at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, I think on 21st September 1972, in which he was reported to have said that he had sent his secret police to Australia. One would believe, would one not. that that would be a highly significant matter for the Attorney-General to take into account. So, on 1 3th March, I first asked him verbally and then he asked me to put on notice the following question:
Are there Yugoslav Government secret police operating in Australia, as stated by President Tito in a speech at Sarajevo? Has the Whitlam Government informed the Yugoslav Government that Australia will not tolerate the presence and activities of secret agents of another nation in this country?
I have waited 3 weeks for an answer. But, more importantly, the Prime Minister of that nation has come and gone and the opportunity has been lost for all honourable senators and the people of Australia to say to him: ‘In this country we will not tolerate under any circumstances political agents or security police of your government or of any other government. We will not have your agents here. We will not have the provocation of violence.’ But there was no need for my question to initiate this. In the ASIO documents there are such statements as this:
The nationalist organisations are also aware that the Yugoslav State authorities maintain a close and continuing interest in all their activities and it is common belief among the members of these organisations that there are numerous agents in their midst who provide comprehensive reports on their activities to the Yugoslav authorities responsible for the security of the State. They are further aware that their activities are also of interest to the responsible authorities of the western countries within which sizable Croatian emigre communities are now established.
The people of Australia must understand that the Croatian people believe - they and ASIO have cause to believe - that in this country decent Croatian people are under continuous surveillance by secret police of a foreign country. Many of those people believe that intimidation and violence is used through the diplomatic officers of the Yugoslav consulates and embassies. Lest there be any thought about that, I ask honourable senators to remember that Senator Little cited the case from ASIO of the murder of a Croat in Spain and the statement that it is believed that the Yugoslav authorities authorised the murder. ASIO went on to state:
It is no secret that the Yugoslav authorities actively pursue such counter-action in other countries as a revenge against acts against themselves.
We then have in the documents but not in the speech by the Attorney-General a statement that there appears a pretty strong case that one man, Mudrinic, was an agent for the Yugoslav embassy here. In that document it was stated that an organisation - as the Attorney-General had alleged - the HIRO was an active revolutionary organisation acting in Australia. ASIO said: ‘Just one minute. There is pretty sound evidence to believe that the whole of that document is a plant, that it has been prepared by Yugoslav secret police. For example, we do not believe that these Croats who crossed the border would have carried that at all. We believe that it was done and created to give the impression that this was so.’ But here we have an Attorney-General denying from the people of Australia the fact that there is an abundance of allegations - it is true that there is no thorough proof, as with the opposite side of the case - that we have acting in this country secret agents of a foreign power.
All that we know is that the Prime Minister of that country came here and that there was a secret Labor Party conference. None of us knows what was said. There was no ability to communicate with the Prime Minister. All of us would have had something to say to him about the abuse of this country and the abuse of terrorism. Let any honourable senator of the Australian Labor Party say that he would not say to the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia: ‘Take your secret police and your secret agents out of here. We will not have them here.’ What has happened is that Senator Greenwood in a magnificent speech today has utterly vindicated his action. He has shown the complete partisanship, the complete bias of the Attorney-General. He has shown that no prosecutions were made. Government supporters keep saying: ‘Have you not seen newspaper reports about the 9 prosecutions?’ Let us make it quite clear that the AttorneyGeneral can claim no credit for those prosecutions. The Attorney-General has said - let him deny it now - that he knew nothing about the raids last weekend, although he said that he saw great fault in Senator Greenwood saying he knew nothing about a police raid.
Let there be no doubt at all that the AttorneyGeneral said he knew nothing about the raids. The prosecutions are not flowing from him at all. In any case, they are post facto - they are after the event, or after the speech. We are dealing with a Government and a Prime Minister who said recently that the only violence of any consequence in recent years in. Australia has come from the right. Senator McManus talked of the Painters and Dockers Union. The plumbers union has been mentioned. All the violence has been from the left. In fact, over the years- (Government senators interjecting) -
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Prowse) - Order! The Senate will come to order. I will not permit this cacophony which is being produced.
– I remind the Senate that some 18 years ago a series of royal commissions - first one and subsequently others - found that there was in this country a subversive organisation called the Communist Party of Australia which trained terrorists in this country, which prevented ammunition from being shipped to our troops overseas, which had subversive documents, and which had training camps at Minto run by Ernie Thornton and which was set to overthrow the whole of democratic government. Who were the people who, man for man, went out and said: ‘We will not declare this organisation illegal. Do not dare to name an organisation as illegal; it would be utterly wrong.’ The Labor Party is indicted by the fact that it-
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT- Order! The honourable senator’s time has expired.
– One would think from the speeches of Senator Carrick, Senator McManus and Senator Wright that there had been no threats of bombing, that the life of the Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) had not been threatened and that Senator Murphy and his wife had not been threatened. If those honourable senators had read the report which was presented by Senator Murphy one would have expected them to find that what Senator Murphy was motivated by is contained in his statement. Of course, they have not only this statement but also reference to the papers that Senator Murphy took from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. If those honourable senators only read the last page of Senator Murphy’s statement they would have seen that Senator Murphy said:
I should like to add a word about events of last week. I am advised that terrorists came to Canberra last week with the intention of killing the Yugoslav Prime Minister. The Commissioner of Commonwealth Police, Mr J. Davis, advised me that, frustrated in that ambition by security precautions, the terrorists might make an alternative attempt on the life of the Australian Prime Minister or other Ministers of the Government. The unanimous opinion of the federal law enforcement authorities was that it was unsafe for the Australian Prime Minister to walk through the Port Kembla Steelworks of the BHP on Wednesday last.
Yet tonight members of this Parliament who were elected by the people in their respective States are not prepared to defend the right to protection of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, who has exposed many of the matters which were concealed by the last Government, and the Prime Minister of this country. If that does not reduce the prestige of the Australian Parliament I do not know what does. But Senator Carrick and Senator McManus suggest all of a sudden that these actions have been acts of agents provocateurs. They have not answered the case which Senator Murphy made. Nobody has answered this question in relation to the letter written by the honourable Phillip Lynch. Honourable senators know what Phillip Lynch said. Let me remind honourable senators what he said. The report of what he said on 3rd December 1969 reads:
That is not Senator Murphy or the Prime Minister, Mr Whitlam, saying that; it is Phillip Lynch, who was then a Minister. Of course, honourable senators opposite know of and have seen the document which contains a statement made by Sir Garfield Barwick when he was Minister for External Affairs. What did he say on 6th January 1964? He said in part:
In essence, the problem is one of ‘keeping an eye’ on immigrant extremists, while operating within the framework of existing law and practice. We should not abandon our democratic principles of free speech, belief and association but I would hope that migrants are left with no misunderstanding of the disfavour with which the Government would view any activities which might reasonably give rise to objections by the present governments of their countries of origin. With this end in mind, I should like to suggest that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation should maintain some supervision over migrant groups. . . .
Sir Garfield Barwick on 16th December 1969 said:
The extremists themselves may by now have come to believe that they can act with impunity and that they can therefore, without risk to themselves, step up the level and frequency of violence.
The defence which Senator Greenwood put up today is not in reality a defence at all because he has not studied or considered what Senator Murphy has said. In fact, no honourable senator opposite has said that it is. Let me remind the Senate that this is not the first time that the Government has been frustrated by the minority groups on the other side. We have been challenged many times. The working of the Government has been frustrated previously. The proposition put forward tonight is the most unjust proposition that I have ever seen introduced in the Senate. The proposal put forward by honourable senators opposite is that Senator Murphy should be condemned because he attempted to mislead the Senate and tabled only selected documents. No honourable senator opposite has challenged or answered the statement made by Senator
Murphy. Rather honourable senators opposite have diverted the attack by saying that these incidents are being caused not by extremists in the community but by agents of the Yugoslav Government.
The Prime Minister of Yugoslavia did not come here at the invitation of the Labor Government. Opposition senators know as well as I do that the invitation arose, as Senator Mulvihill reminded us tonight, out of a visit to that country by a group of Commonwealth politicians. Senator Mulvihill was a member of that group and the previous Speaker of the Parliament, Sir William Aston, who was a notable politician, led the delegation which went to Yugoslavia. When these politicians went there their security was not threatened. They did not have to be worried about bomb threats by groups in that community who might attack the Australians because they did not like them. While he was there Sir William Aston said to the Prime Minister of the country: ‘Come to Australia. On behalf of the Government I issue an invitation.’ It is 2 years since that invitation was issued to the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia. What has been the reaction to the visit to Australia of the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia? Everybody knows; it is common talk. One does not have to study Senator Murphy’s statement; all one need do is listen to the news broadcasts, to read the newspapers or to watch television to know that threats were made. Everybody knew about this. Senator Carrick said that it was a stunt, but everybody knew that Senator Murphy was under great tension in this place. Anybody could see it. He had a guard all the time. No doubt he has a security guard now.
Senator Murphy has made it clear that he had good relations with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, but he made the raid for one specific purpose: It was the result of a paper which he received and which has been tabled. No-one can say that that is not the truth because it is the truth. For very good reasons which have now been supported by the Prime Minister he was justified in the action that he took. Senator Carrick quoted an early comment from the Prime Minister who said that he did not know about the raid.
– He has not tabled it.
– The honourable senator has not read the Hansard record lately. He has not been doing his homework. A few days ago the Prime Minister complimented
Senator Murphy and said his motives were honourable, that he was justified, but that he did not want to refer to the document for security reasons which were in the interests of our country. Opposition senators did not quote that - they quoted parts of it. They have complained that Senator Murphy takes pieces out of documents - and they come in here and do the same thing. Senator Carrick has not told us what the Prime Minister said recently; that is the fact. It is on record in the other place that the Prime Minister commended Senator Murphy but the only reasonable contribution which Senator Carrick could make was that the tour should have been cancelled; that is, if the threat to the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, who had been invited to this country by the past Government, was so bad-
– Why are you arguing about who invited him?
– He was a visitor to this country, an important head of a foreign country, and we. supported the invitation.
– You are drawing red herrings across the path.
– Senator Jessop is trying to deflect the argument. He well knows what took place. It is well known; nobody has to debate the question- or I hope not. All that is happening here tonight is that Opposition senators just will not answer this proposition. They are not prepared to accept that there was a threat to the people I have mentioned. I would have thought that honourable senators whether Labor, Country Party, Democratic Labor Party or Liberal would be the first to defend their politicians. What have the Opposition senators done instead? They have taken the occasion to subject Senator Murphy to the most intensive persecution since the report was made, every day of this week diverting the course of the Government’s work in this Parliament. They have subjected Senator Murphy to this courtroom bullying tactic; these so-called expert lawyers on the other side of the House have challenged Senator Murphy, who is a highly qualified Queen’s Counsel; daily they have subjected him to intensive questioning - and at the end of 7 days they have got no evidence, at the end of 7 days they cannot answer the propositions. Nobody has explained the meaning of Sir Garfield Barwick’s statement or what Mr Phillip Lynch was putting or what Mr
McMahon said. Nobody has challenged the view of the senior Commonwealth police officer, though I have read it to the Senate. (Opposition senators interjecting)
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Prowse) - Order! There are too many interjections. Please let Senator Bishop continue his speech.
– What Senator Greenwood came out with today is less positive than what he said to Senator Mulvihill in May last year when Senator Mulvihill asked him this question:
– I direct a question to the Attorney-General. Do the revelations in the conviction of Zdenko Marincic depict the tip of the iceberg in the operations of an ultra right wing Croatian group in West Germany,? Are Australian authorities co-operating fully with West German authorities to eliminate this terrorist group?
Senator Greenwood, among other things, said:
I have said before that there is evidence of terrorist activities amongst groups in the Yugoslav community and, on other occasions, I have deplored the existence of those activities. Whether or not it is the work of a group of individuals is difficult to say.
– That was what Senator Greenwood said in May. And today he has relied upon a lot of old history.
– Oh, no.
– Yes, back to February 1971 and April 1972. Senator Greenwood had the value of all these documents. Senator Murphy made a statement, produced the references and came into this chamber with a great pile of documents to which the Senate has had access. In addition, Senator Greenwood, when Attorney-General, had access, of course, to his own files which he has today used. But having access to his files did not do his case any good because he has not in any way confounded what Senator Murphy has put. There has been no evidence excepting old statements that have been referred to about the lack of verification of terrorist groups.
– What was that statement? 1 hope it does not read too well in Hansard.
– I said that Senator Greenwood could not do otherwise than say that in his opinion the evidence showed that there is no verification of terrorist groups in Australia. That is the substance of what he said, and he relied on the old statements but accepted that there had been a statement made as recently as 23rd November which he had not seen and which we know he had not seen.
– He quoted October 1972 as the time of advice from ASIO on-
- Senator Webster, I have told you the facts. You should read the statement again. I have said that Senator Greenwood’s case is based on a lot of old history going back to 1971 and 1972 but September 1972 was the date of the latest information that he had in his documents. But from all those documents he did not attempt to disprove the matters that I have referred to tonight and the more important matters which Senator Murphy has included in his statement. I am surprised that after this long delay which the Opposition members have had and with all the experts in the Opposition - the lawyers of note - they have not been able to produce any evidence after 7 days and after a number of days of very intensive questioning of the Leader of the Government. At times, I, like many other senators, was shocked at the way the Opposition treated the Leader of the Government, by the questions they put to him when he was under great strain. Other members of the Government have told me-
– What did you do to Scott?
– That is a different situation. One cannot compare what happened today and yesterday with what happened during the Scott incident. The Scott case was straightforward whereas this case is one in which the leaders of our Government, for the first time in Australian history, have been threatened by terrorists; and yet Opposition senators sit there and try to defend them by saying that it must be the action of agents provocateurs. Opposition senators put this tripe to the Senate because they have the numbers - it is another measure to frustrate the Government. They have talked about Senator Murphy using political criticism, that he directed his statement to political criticism of his predecessor. What is government all about? Government is about politics and our political leader in this House, of course, treated the matter politically just as the former Attorney:General in his own case treated those matters politically in the old days. Everybody knows this, because we were subjected to it when we were in Opposition and the present Opposition was in government. Every time a trade unionist or a national serviceman was mentioned, the then Government members became agitated. They never talked about free speech then. They made all sorts of attacks on students and trade unionists and national servicemen - and Senator Greenwood authorised raids on the homes of national servicemen which embarrassed mothers and fathers and also the young people while they were on holidays. Raids were made in the early morning and even on Christmas Day. This is well known, the dogs are barking it. Nobody suspects that statement for it is well known and was brought up in this House. But all of a sudden Opposition members have become advocates of law and order. These were regulations which the former Government made and which its Ministers operated under and which are being used now. The Minister for Immigration (Mr Grassby) is using devices invented by the last Government to take action against people who may be deported. These processes are the processes formulated by the previous Government. . Senator Murphy, however, has brought to the notice of the Australian community a threat, and because of that threat he has been under great pressure, as has the Government. Nobody can defend the situation whereby leaders of the Government or leaders of the Opposition are threatened. Had Senator Greenwood and Senator Withers been threatened today, members, on this side of the House would be up defending them and attacking those who threatened them. It is not right, it is not Australian, it should be condemned.
I turn now to the next point made by the Opposition, namely that Senator Murphy wantonly raided and damaged ASIO’s reputation. Senator Murphy has dispelled this argument. He has told the Senate the reason for the raid and why it was necessary. He has produced evidence in this Parliament and, in addition, he has given his reason quite honestly. Here I refer to what I consider to be his honourable intention for he did not reveal the reason for several days, not until his Party colleagues told him that he should do so, that he should mention in his’ own defence the reason for his action. That to me is an honourable gesture - and the Prime Minister was good enough to commend him for it as a result of questions which were raised in the House of Representatives.
Our relations with ASIO, of course, are good and have npt been damaged. Senator
Murphy has told the Senate that his relations with the head of Security are good, that he has brought him to Canberra, which is logical and proper, because, as he said in his statement, the relations between Commonwealth Police and ASIO have not been good in the past and ought to be changed. What is wrong with that statement? Opposition senators have talked about the relationships of security services in other countries. I point out that in the United States the security service is subject to the President and in the United Kingdom the security service is subject to the Prime Minister. There is nothing new in that proposition. In an atmosphere of intense terror in Australia some extraordinary actions have been taken by security forces. I compliment ASIO and members of the police force, for actions they took in this Parliament and elsewhere to protect our leaders. The terms of the amendment are most unjust. It concludes as follows, referring to Senator Murphy:
Honourable members opposite are saying that we should not consider doing the sorts of things that they did when they were in government. They forget that all of these things were done to young Australians, not to migrants, who said that they did not want to be conscripted and that they would not go to Vietnam. I want to refer now to statements made by some very important people in Australia. Mr Frank Galbally, a well known Melbourne criminal lawyer, went on record in the Press yesterday as saying that many Melbourne migrants were stood over every pay day for a percentage of their pay packets. Mr Galbally said that the collectors are members of overseas terrorist organisations.
– He will represent anybody who has the money.
– You do not want to listen. I am quoting the words of a prominent lawyer who has defended many people on your side of the chamber. He said that collections are made at the factory gate and that they involve up to 10 per cent of the pay packets. He said that it is simply a matter of pay up or take what is coming. He said that he has knowledge of 4 recent killings in Mel bourne which were committed in self defence against collectors acting on behalf of overseas terrorist organisations.
– Has he given that evidence in court?
– He said that he knows of at least 20 cases - perhaps Senator Little knows some, too - of people who have been coerced into handing over part of their pay packets to terrorist organisations. Mr Galbally was reported in yesterday’s edition of the Canberra Times’ as saying: ‘To my knowledge the standover campaign has been going on for 3 years.’ What has happened? Over that long period of investigation by members of this Parliament - particularly Labor Party members - the previous Attorney-General could do nothing more than produce the sort of answers-
– Why do you not-
– Where is the free speech now? A little while ago Senator Byrne and Senator Jessop rose to complain about Senator Mulvihill or Senator Milliner. When you give the information back to them they are not prepared to take it. It is clear to me and to most Australians that the amendments proposed today by the Opposition is purely a tactic, another expression of the minority Opposition. We have to become used to being in Government. Honourable senators opposite are not yet used to being out of office. Many honourable senators opposite who have spoken in this debate still think that they are Ministers with access to all the influence they had before. When they had that influence they could not exercise it properly. The proof is in the absence of positive action by Senator Greenwood.
No case has been made out in support of the proposed amendment. I will be shocked if people on this side of the Senate or any of the independent senators support the proposition. I think the tactic has failed. The most damning thing of all is that although we have been elected by an overwhelming majority of the people of Australia, a combination of small groups can put up this sort of proposition and expect the Senate to approve it. If the amendment is carried the Australian Parliament will be reduced in status. It will be bad for the parliamentary system. I expected honourable senators opposite to deal with the issues which Senator Murphy raised. I had hoped that honourable senators with any sense of justice and those with some training in the law - like Senator Rae who is continuing to interject - would deal with the issues and answer them before putting forward a proposition like the one we are debating tonight.
– The document that has been distributed - I hope that the time consumed while I wait to be heard over the interjections will not be taken from the time I am allowed to speak - that is, the statement by the Attorney-General (Senator Murphy) on 27th March, a copy of which was distributed to every member of the Senate, is a damning indictment of the ineptitude, inaction and failure of the previous Government; not only of the previous AttorneyGeneral, but also of the previous Government which did not take action against people who could be shown to have acted in a manner which could have caused death, bodily injury and damage to property. I am referring, in other words, to a terrorist group within the Australian community.
Three major points are at issue tonight. The first is this: Do we agree that acts of violence by individuals and/ or groups of individuals which have exposed the community to death, bodily injury and damage to property must be stamped out? I think we would all agree that appropriate action should be taken, irrespective of the nationalities of the people involved, when it is shown that people are carrying out such acts within the community. The people who are committing these acts of terrorism must be identified.
The second major point at issue tonight is: Is there any evidence to suggest that acts of terrorism have in fact been carried out since 1963? The third major point is: Are there identifiable national groups which can be said to have been party to these acts of terrorism? (Senator Rae interjecting) -
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Prowse) - Order! No honourable senator is entitled to interject and to demand answers. Interjections are disorderly and this rule will be applied to honourable senators on both sides of the chamber.
– Mr Deputy President-
– On a point of order-
– I was on my feet first, Mr Deputy President. If I may be called-
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT- I do not know who was first on his feet.
– I wish to apologise if I was in breach of Standing Orders. I was making what I thought was a not unreasonable interjection which was based upon an interjection which has been current, I apologise-
– Mr Deputy President, I am raising a point of order.
– I apologise if I have been out of order. My interjection was in accordance with what has passed’ for a. reasonable interjection in the past. I do not intend to interject any further.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT- I call Senator Keeffe.
– The situation has now passed, Mr Deputy President. I was raising a point of order because an honourable senator was making a personal explanation, in a form completely .contrary to all the provisions of the Standing Orders. You did not give me the call, Mr Deputy President, and I object very strenuously.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT- I call Senator Wilkinson.
Senator Wilkinson - My point; of order is this: When you are trying, as the Deputy President, . to keep order in the chamber I consider it is wrong for the broadcasting control operator to switch on the microphone in front of an interjector. That is what happened tonight .and it has happened on a number of occasions. The control operator has switched on the microphone of an interjector who should not be interjecting. The point of order I am making is that an honourable senator is not allowed to interject. I claim that no microphone of an honourable senator who is interjecting should be switched on because an interjection is in defiance of the ruling of the Chair, in defiance of Standing Orders and it should not be made.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT- The point of order raised by Senator Wilkinson is one for consideration by the Standing Orders Committee or by some other authority. It is not one for my determination at the moment. The honourable senator’s protest is noted. I call on Senator Brown to continue his speech and I expect him to be heard in silence.
– I say in passing that I listened to the remarks made by Senator
Greenwood today. I believe that he was entitled to be heard by the Senate and was entitled to have as much time as he required to present his case in the form of a defence against the indictment to which I referred at the beginning of my remarks. I hope that the Senate will give me an opportunity to express my views without these constant interjections which are, in effect, reducing my speaking time. I was asking these questions before the interruption: Is there any evidence to suggest that acts of terrorism have been committed since 1963? Against whom have these acts been committed? I was about to direct the attention of honourable senators to the Hansard record of the House of Representatives of 20th April 1972 at page 1869. In part, this is the speech delivered by my leader, the present Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam). He said:
Since 1963 there have been repeated bashings, bombings and murders associated with this group. Arrests have been remarkably few; investigations remarkably fruitless. Some time ago, in August 1964, it was possible for Prime Minister Menzies to say:
The Commonwealth’s own investigations so far have not produced any evidence which would warrant legal proceedings.
My leader went on to say:
Whatever might have been the position then, it certainly cannot be so claimed today. On 30th November 1968 the Yugoslav Consulate-General in Sydney was subject to one of its periodic blastings. On the same day the present Prime Minister (Mr McMahon) said of the Ustasha: ‘Their cause is a good one. We must encourage the spirit of independence’.
My leader went on to say in the same speech at page 1870:
In fact, the record has mounted since then, because on 7th April last year the then Minister for Foreign Affairs told me that there had been bombings of the Yugoslav Consulate-General in Sydney m January 1967, in November 1968 and in June 1969; that there had been a bomb explosion at the Yugoslav New Settlers League Party in the Richmond Town Hall in November 1967; that there had been an attack on the Chancery of the Yugoslav Embassy in Canberra in November 1969; and that there had been a bombing of the Yugoslav Consulate-General in Melbourne in October 1970.
I think that it will have to be conceded that there is clear evidence of bombings and that these bombings have exposed to risk of death not only those who were directly associated with these Consulates or Chanceries but also the public who may have been in the vicinity. There has been risk of bodily harm and also, as a side effect, the destruction of property.
So it can be said without fear of contradiction or doubt that there is clear evidence and also that there is clear evidence to show against whom these acts of terrorism have been committed. I want to refer briefly to the statement that was presented by Senator Greenwood in a defence in which frankly I must concede he had difficulties because he was attempting to defend the indefensible. It took Senator Greenwood about an hour to deliver a speech of some 30 pages. Firstly, I wish to refer to his remarks on page 3 where he said:
It is inconceivable that if there is evidence of organised terrorism there should be no prosecutions.
He goes on to say:
Why, if the evidence is there, have there been no prosecutions? No reason ls given.
It would seem to me that Senator Greenwood prepared this statement before the weekend and was not capable of changing course. As you know, Mr Deputy President - I do not propose to say any more than this about the matter - there have been a number of arrests and charges laid by the police. It is alleged that persons have been in possession of weapons, explosives and other material that could do bodily harm and damage property. Senator Greenwood then continued on page 3:
The Attorney-General had an abundance of material available to him. What he chose not to disclose is revealing.
This is the part I want to emphasise: 1 have a document, received from ASIO last year and dated 13th April 1972 - -
– May I ask what number?
– It is not numbered. It is in the statement of the honourable senator’s colleague at page 3. I am quoting directly from his statement. I shall continue:
I have a document, received from ASIO last year and dated 13th April 1972, which Senator Murphy has available to him and which he has not tabled. And what does it say? It expressed, in 11 closely argued pages, that it is difficult not to believe that the majority of violent incidents involving Yugoslavs in Australia . . .
He then quotes the document as follows: - if they are indeed the work of Croatian nationalists - must also be the result of activity by isolated individuals or very small groups. Certainly the incidents themselves have been of a type not requiring organisational support, but rather, limited ingenuity on the behalf of an individual to obtain explosives and construct a simple detonating mechanism.
I wish now to quote from page 4 of Senator Greenwood’s statement and from the document that Senator Greenwood was prepared to table. The document stated: . . that while there were grounds for presuming that the Croatian Nationalist Organisations as entities are unlikely to be involved in such violence in Australia, a more probable explanation lies in the activities of individuals and small groups acting independently without organisational support.
Senator Greenwood then said:
I shall table the document and I challenge the Attorney-General. Why did he not table it? Why did he make no reference to its conclusions?
The simple answer to that is that we have heard all this before. In the course of asking questions over a period of years, this was the sort of answer we received from the former Attorney-General on every occasion. On page. 5 he repeats the statement that he made on 20th July 1972. He said:
Investigations by the Commonwealth Police so far have not revealed any credible evidence that any Croatian revolutionary terrorist organisation exists in Australia. The Government cannot positively reject assertions that individuals or groups of individuals may be engaging in terrorist activities directed in some way to achieving Croatian independence. - Allegations of such activities and other matters are frequently brought to the notice of the police and these are subject to continuous investigation. If investigations disclose such activities, the person so engaged will be prosecuted if their activities are in breach of the law.
Again, it is the same sort of answer that we received over a period of years when continual terrorist activities were being carried out. The former Attorney-General said at page 7 of his statement:
I was consistently receiving submissions from the Police, from ASIO and from the Attorney-General’s Department on the whole question of terrorism.
He refers then to another report. But what I want to point out is that Senator Greenwood, in the course of his remarks, never once intimated that not only did he receive submissions from the police, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and from the AttorneyGeneral’s Department but that also he received submissions from members of the community and from honourable senators, including myself. On 24th July 1972 I wrote to Senator Greenwood in the following terms:
My Dear Minister,
Enclosed please find photocopies of six (6) documents, five (5) are accompanied by English transla tions to the extent it was possible, together with some covering explanatory notes which have come into my possession.
From all reports I have read in newspapers recently, which have been attributed to yourself, it appears the Federal Police have been unable to substantiate allegations that there is in fact a link between acts of terrorism by migrants from Croatia or other parts of Yugoslavia and the Ustasha.
I am prompted to place before you the abovementioned documents for 2 reasons: firstly because of an answer you gave to Senator Murphy on 12th April 1972 which appears on pages 992 and 993 of Senate Hansard, and secondly, because these documents disclose there is a sinister, clandestine-like terrorist group in our midst that cannot be tolerated and must be exposed.
A close study of these documents I believe, will show an irrefutable link between .certain people who migrated to Australia from’ Yugoslavia and the Ustasha.
The following 2 references point up the awareness of the Government to incidents in Australia which have a connection with an extremist group from Yugoslavia.
I ask honourable senators to listen to this:
On 28th April last year-
That would be 1971- the Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs wrote to Mr Whitlam in these terms:
Various organisations in Australia’ celebrate 10th April 1941 as the date of Croatian . independence. On 6th April, Hitler attacked Yugoslavia as a prelude to its subsequent occupation and dismemberment. As part of this operation, on 10th .April 1941, the Germans created a puppet Croatian, state, dominated by the Ustasha terrorist movement under Ante Pavlic who had, until then been in exile In Italy. The victory of the Yugoslav Resistance in the war against Germany put . an end to the so-called. . Independent State of Croatia.’
The annual report of the Department of Foreign Affairs Ministry for 1968-69 stated:
I again ask the Senate to listen carefully. The letter continues: “There have been some demonstrations against Yugoslav offices in Australia, mostly inspired or carried out by extremists . or . terrorist’ elements formerly in Croatia or from other -parts of Yugoslavia.’
There have been eight (8) serious bomb attacks in Australia since 1966 on persons of Yugoslav origin; the Yugoslav Consulate in Sydney and Melbourne, the Serbian Church in Canberra and the Migrant Information Centre of the ANZ’ Bank in Melbourne at a time when there was an exhibition of Yugoslav costumes.
No doubt you have access to the details of all these, and other outrageous acts.
All these incidents are acts of terrorism.
I am informed that to raise funds, a passport extortion racket operates among Yugoslavs. Yugoslavs are approached by agents from this extremist group and asked their nationality. Any answer but Croatian is good for a bashing or’ worse, and if the answer is Croatian, the victim is asked to produce his ‘Croatian’ passport, costing between $50 and $100.
Melbourne supplier of the fake passport is Ivan Rupic, who lives at 1 King Street, Deepdene, Victoria.
I am further informed that on Thursday 20th April 1972 inFootscray Court, a Mr Bobinac of 59 Commercial Road, Footscray was convicted of assault on a Yugoslav migrant. The reason for the assault was the victim’s use of the word ‘Yugoslavia’ instead of ‘Croatia’.
Earlier in the week a Mr Barac was arrested for being in possession of a quantity of gelignite, fuses and detonators. He also lives at 59 Commercial Road, Footscray.
You did indicate in your answer to Senator Murphy on 12th April, you hoped an opportunity could be provided in the not too distant future for something quite comprehensive to be said on this subject matter.
The material I have provided should enable appropriate inquiries of people and organisations who. either knowingly or unwittingly, are involved in a movement alien to our way of life.
The seriousness of this matter I am sure you will agree, warrants urgent attention and a statement of intention to the Commonwealth Parliament at the earliest opportunity.
The letter was signed by myself. I repeat that it was dated 24th July. On 14th August I received this reply from the AttorneyGeneral :
My dear senator.
I write to acknowledge that I have received and read your letter of 24th July in which you urge that my attention be given to documents which you enclosed relating to activities of migrants from Croatia.
I shall arrange for the Commonwealth Police to examine the documents which you enclosed and ascertain if there is material in them which has not previously come to their knowledge.
However, I must assure you that there has been a full investigation of allegations relating to activities of Croatians, and the Commonwealth Police have a very full file of material of the type which you have sent to me.
I note that you refer to my response to Senator Murphy, on 12th April. I did issue a Press statement, of considerable length, on 20th July in which I referred to a number of allegations made. I subsequently issued a further statement on 11th August.I enclose a copy of each statement for your information.
I shall write to you again, after the Commonwealth Police have examined the material which you enclosed in your letter.
That letter was signed ‘Ivor Greenwood’. That was on 14th August 1972. I understand that the former Attorney-General held that position until the day prior to the election, namely, 2nd December. I have not heard from him one word about the subject matter which I placed before him at that time. I point out that I went to the trouble of having the original material, which was in the Yugoslav language, translated into English so that it would save him and his Department the need to have the translation done. I am prepared to table the documents this evening if the Senate wishes. One is a document named ‘Review’. It carries grotesque Ustasha symbols which are characteristic of that movement. Page 9 of the translation, which relates to page 6 of the document, states:
When the introductory thoughts have been accepted, the plan of the statute has been compiled, which shall be forwarded within the framework of these principles to all the societies and institutions for additional and detailed compilation.
At this joint work the following authorised delegates of the following Croatian movements, societies and institutions were present:
The names of the organisations’ are:
The Croatian Liberation Movement - Melbourne - Geelong - Ballarat
The Croatian National Resistance - Melbourne - Geelong - Ballarat
Croatian Clerical Representation - Victoria
Croatian Church Committee-Victoria
Croatian National Committee -Berlin - Melbourne
Croatian Youth - Victoria
Croatian Soccer Club ‘Croatia’ - Melbourne
Incidentally, that soccer club has been banned from the competition because of the violence of its supporters. The translation continues:
Croatian Soccer Club ‘North Geelong’ - Geelong
Croatian Society ‘Stjepan Radic’ - Ballarat
Society of the Croatian National Resistance ‘Jure Knight Francetic’ - Geelong
Society, of Croatian Society ‘Cardinal Stepinac’ - Geelong
Australian Croatian Society - Melbourne.
The delegates of the foregoing societies and institutions, on careful discussion and individual voting, in conjunction with the Plan of Statute elected the following office bearers of the Co-ordinating Committee for Victoria:
President: Srecko Rover, Melbourne
That name has been mentioned quite often in this chamber and has appeared quite often in newspapers. The translation continues:
Secretary: Josip Cuk, Melbourne
Treasurer: Josip Pavlovic, Geelong
Deputy Treasurer: Ivan Rupic, Melbourne
He is the gentleman to whom I referred in my letter to the Attorney-General as the person from whom one could obtain passports. The last page of the translation states:
Our celebrations of 10th April-
Honourable senators will recall what the Department of Foreign Affairs said about 10th April- are the expression of esteem of the previous generation of Croatian heroes and an invitation to the new ones for tomorrow’s freedom of the Croatian people.
Review - Bulletin of Croatian National Resistance in Australia, P.O. Box 23, Brunswick, Vic.
That is not very far from where I live. I have a photo-copy of a further document - a calendar. Similar symbols appear on that document. They are consistent with the Ustasha organisation symbols which can be seen on documents in other parts of the world. The calendar was produced in Geelong. The postal address is P.O. Box 5, North Geelong, Victoria, Australia. The photograph on the front depicts the Nazi troops victoriously marching into Yugoslavia in 1941. The former Attorney-General may smile but I hope that he can answer my charges in due course. The word ‘HOP’ which is on the side of the calendar has been referred to quite consistently. It is the symbol of the Croatian Liberation Movement. I sent to the Attorney-General a further document. It was issued by the Croatian National Committee. On the front page there is a photograph of the war criminal Dr B. Jelic who was leader of one branch of the Ustasha movement in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is all there to be seen. Pages 3 and 5 refer specifically to passports. The translation reads:
Croatian men and women!
Perhaps never in all these 30 years was the celebration of the memory of the 10th April 1941 held as it was this year. Croatians all over the world felt that our struggle is coming closer to the critical phase. The Croatian National Committee-
I referred to that Committee earlier. The translation continues:
I will not weary the Senate by reading the rest of this document but I repeat my offer to table it if honourable senators wish me to do so. I turn to page 5 of this document. This latter part reads:
Croatian men and women, to obtain a Croatian State passport please contact the following address:
The Headquarters of the Croatian National Committee of Australia issues this leaflet to inform the wider Croatian public in Australia that it is to joint the action of Croatian citizenship.
page 851
This document then gives 2 addresses. Nothing has been left out. It would not have been difficult for the former Attorney-General to follow this circular up. The 2 addresses are:
The Croatian National Committee Headquarters for Australia, Box 39 P.O., Stanmore, NSW 2048, SYDNEY and:
The Croatian National Committee/Victoria Branch, 1 King St. Deepdene, Vic. 3103 MELBOURNE.
That is where the gentleman who issued this document lived.
If that is not sufficient, I also sent to the former Attorney-General the document from which I am about to quote and which I will seek the leave of the Senate to have incorporated in Hansard. I will read part of it and then seek leave of the Senate to incorporate the full quotation. The document reads:
page 851
Mr Ivica Kokic is a senior employment officer in the Commonwealth Employment Service, which comes under the Federal Department of Labour and National Service. He has heldimportant posts at suburban employment offices such as Sunshine and Glenroy, but promotion recently took him to the head office in the city.
In other circles he is known as Satnik Ivica Kokic and is given great respect as a top leader of an organisation known as HOP-
The document then gives a precise description of the meaning of the word ‘Satnik’. It continues:
The word ‘Satnik’ means captain, but a special kind of captain. It was a word especially coined in the years 1941-44 when Croatia - a republic of Yugoslavia - was under Nazi rule.
That document is accompanied by the other document dealing with passports to which I have referred already.
On 12th October 1972 I asked the then Attorney-General, Senator Greenwood, who was also the Minister representing in the Senate the then Minister for Immigration, Dr Forbes, the following question:
My question is directed to the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration. Would the issue of passports by a person or persons or an organisation in Australia other than the appropriate department be a breach of Commonwealth law? If the Minister agrees that such conduct is a breach of Commonwealth law, what action has been taken against the person whom I have cited in correspondence to the Attorney-General, which person is said to be the person from whom such passports are available?
Senator Greenwood replied:
I am unable to answer the particular matter which the honourable senator has raised. I would assume that the issue of forged passports would be an offence against law. I ask the honourable senator to put his question on notice, and I will have the matter investigated.
I repeat that that question was asked on 12th October 1972. Again, I did not receive any further information about it. Following the dissolution of the other House, that question was wiped from the Notice Paper.
I concede that honourable senators opposite face a problem in attempting to defend the indefensible. I refer next to an article in the Melbourne ‘Sun’ of Thursday, 18th May 1972. The contents of this article have been accurately reported because I have checked them out with other records of the former Minister for Immigration, Dr Forbes. This article is headed:
Mounties took his passport - MPs told why.
The article reads:
A Melbourne businessman’s Australian passport has been cancelled ‘because of his role in . the Croatian Nationalist Movement’, Federal Parliament was told yesterday.
The businessman is Mr S’recko Rover.
Again, that is a name that we have heard so often. The article continues:
The Immigration Minister, Dr Forbes, said information on the role of Mr Rover became available after he had left Australia on an overseas trip.
These were the words of the former Minister for Immigration in the previous Government. The article continues:
He was replying in the House of Representatives to Dr Cairns (Labor, Victoria) who asked why the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had seized Mr Rover’s passport.
Dr Forbes said: ‘When Mr Rover left Australia, information became available to me that his role in the Croatian nationalist movement was such that it was not in Australia’s interests to have his travel facilitated by the Australian Government while he was in possession of an Australian passport.
In the circumstances, I exercised powers available to me under section 8 of the Passport Act to have Mr Rover’s passport cancelled.
Dr Forbes stated that Canadian authorities had issued Mr Rover with an identity document to enable him to travel back to Australia.
All I am saying about this matter is that this is clear evidence again that even the former Government had great trepidations about a number of people who have been cited over and over again by members on this side of the Senate and also by individuals within the community-
– Order! The honourable senator’s time has expired. I call Senator Rae.
– -Before I commence my speech, perhaps I should seek to clarify whether Senator Brown did or did not incorporate in Hansard any document. He referred to his wish to do so.
– I am aware of this fact. I left the option open to Senator Brown. He began to read a document and the option was open to him subsequently to table the document and to ask for leave to have the balance of it incorporated in Hansard. I do not know what your wish is on this point, Senator Brown?
– I offer my apologies to the Senate. I did not realise that my time had passed so quickly. I do wish to have incorporated in Hansard the document to which I referred.
– Which document is that?
– The one referring to Mr-
– May I suggest to Senator Brown that he renew his application, which is an application made after ‘the conclusion of his speech,- tomorrow- ‘
– No. I will put the question now. Is leave granted to incorporate the document - -
– May I . simply suggest to Senator Brown that he renew his application tomorrow after we have had an opportunity to see the document. That is the request that 1 would have made if he had sought leave in the course of his speech.
– Leave is not granted.
– I simply ask that the honourable senator renew his application tomorrow.
– Leave is not granted. I call Senator Rae.*
– We have heard a great deal in a variety of ways about 2 very fundamental subjects. The first aspect is the role, importance and function of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation which is known as ASIO. It is a body about which the Australian public knew little, thought little and cared little until Senator Murphy decided, for reasons best known to himself, to embark upon what has now become known as Murphy’s melodrama. The
I shall deal first with the second matter and then return to the first, not because I think the first matter is unimportant but because I think that the second matter has been the major matter dealt with by a number of speakers this afternoon and this evening. Senator Greenwood made a restrained statement which did not contain the adjectives, the extremism and the absurdities of the statement made by the Attorney-General, Senator Murphy, but rather dealt with the situation fact by fact. If I were to criticise my colleague, the former Attorney-General, Senator Greenwood, I would criticise him for one thing only, and that is that he has behaved as an Attorney-General should rather than as a politician tends to do. Opposed to that we have seen the most disgraceful episode known, I suggest, to the Senate, by the person who at the moment holds the office of Attorney-General - and has disgraced it. He has disgraced the office of Attorney-General in a way which this Senate and this country will not forget in a very long time.
That eminent helper of Senator Murphy, Senator James McClelland, was the first person to speak in defence after Senator Greenwood had made his factual statement- a statement not filled with pejoratives and adjectives but a statement filled with facts. Senator James McClelland apparently rushed to the defence of the statement for reasons best known to himself as to why he should wish to so assiduously defend the statement which Senator Murphy made.
– I am on his side.
– So I understand, but I am not sure whether he believes that you are on his side after the statement he made, as I understand it, with assistance. Be that as it may-
– He does not need enemies when he has friends like Senator James McClelland.
– Senator Gair says that Senator Murphy does not need enemies when he has friends like Senator James McClelland. Who am I to argue with Senator Gair about that aspect? All I say is that I find it most interesting to see Senator James McClelland rushing to the defence of the statement. Senator James McClelland made a signficant remark in the course of his speech. He said that something over a fortnight ago he was shown a film by the Commonwealth Police of the 1963 ‘Wodonga training camp’ - and 1 use the words ‘Wodonga training camp’ in inverted commas. I wonder why Senator James McClelland saw that film at that time? I wonder why it was that the Commonwealth Police were both interested, concerned and prepared to show it to him at that time.
– You could have seen it if you had asked. Why did you not see it?
– Let us think for a moment about the matter raised by Senator James McClelland - what happened 10 years ago at the Wodonga training camp. I was talking to an Australian in Hobart last Monday night, an Australian who came originally from Yugoslavia. I showed him the photographs tabled by the Attorney-General. He looked at them and said: ‘Oh, there is so-and-so and soandso and so-and-so. He described to me these terrible terrorists who are portrayed in this film of such great importance that Senator James McClelland was at great pains to talk about.
– Have you seen the film?
– No, but I have seen the photographs and I have talked to somebody who was there, which is more than you have done.
– Why not see the film?
– I would be delighted to do so if the Commonwealth Police would extend to me the same sort of privileges which they extend to you. I will here and now request through Senator Murphy, who has just arrived that I be able to see the film. I am sure other honourable senators of my Party would like to be granted the same privilege.
– Your request will be granted. You can see the film if you like. Assuming that the details can be arranged, you can see it tomorrow.
– Senator Murphy says that we can see the film. I am grateful to him. I wonder, Mr President, whether it will take the matter any further than the photographs did.
– You will find out.
– I will be interested to find out and unlike Senator James McClelland I will reserve judgment until I have seen it.
– Until you have seen the film. I saw the film and then I passed judgment.
– Yes, you passed judgment in relation to a lot of matters. Let me deal with some of them and then I shall return to the matter of the Wodonga training camp. Firstly Senator James McClelland accused the former Attorney-General, Senator Greenwood, of saying that there had been no prosecutions undertaken by the present Attorney-General. Senator James McClelland said that Senator Greenwood should have waited until after last weekend. He said that Senator Greenwood should have waited until he has seen that there were prosecutions and then amended his speech. I want to quote for Senator James McClelland’s benefit and for the benefit of other honourable senators, the second paragraph on page 3 of the statement made this afternoon by Senator Greenwood, the former Attorney-General. He said:
It is inconceivable that if there is evidence of organised terrorism there should be no prosecutions. And, naturally, what we are concerned about arc not prosecutions of individuals following police raids and arrests since the Attorney-General made his statement last week. We are concerned to challenge and deny the Attorney-General’s assertions that last year the evidence was available in abundance to support prosecutions.
Senator James McClelland deliberately and clearly misled the public and the Senate this afternoon. Having heard the former AttorneyGeneral, Senator Greenwood, and having before him a copy of his statement which was made available for reference, he made a misstatement and made an accusation against Senator Greenwood.
– What was it?
– The accusation cannot be sustained by the evidence before this Senate. Senator James McClelland referred to the fact that there were no prosecutions and said that Senator Greenwood should have waited until after last weekend before making any comment because he would then have known that there were some prosecutions.
The whole point made by Senator Greenwood and the whole point made by the Opposition - I state it and re-state it - is this: The gravamen of the charges made by Senator
Murphy apparently supported to a degree and in a lukewarm fashion by his supporters sitting beside him on the Government’ side of the chamber, is that the former Attorney-General was soft on terrorism and that he did not act on the evidence available to him - here I interpolate - to launch prosecutions which should have been launched against terrorists in Australia. The point made by Senator Greenwood and the point which we of the Opposition in this chamber make is simply this: Four months have passed since Senator Murphy was appointed to office as AttorneyGeneral. He has had available to him during those 4 months the evidence which was available to Senator Greenwood plus anything else which has become available since his appointment. Senator Murphy has riot instituted ‘ a single solitary prosecution against any Croatian or any other person in Australia in relation to alleged terrorism arising out of facts which were known or available to Senator Greenwood when he was Attorney-General. No further proof is needed to rebut the charges made’ by Senator Murphy than that simple fact. Senator Murphy must, as was suggested to him in certain editorials and articles in the Press, cither put up or shut up. Senator Murphy now is in the position of having to shut up. Tt has been demonstrated that he, apparently with the assistance of Senator James McClelland, judging by the use of the word ‘we*, engaged-
– That was an interesting word, was it not?
– Yes, it was an interesting word. I thank Senator Young for the interjection.
– I think that Senator James McClelland might have written Senator Murphy’s speech.
– I do not know whether Senator Young is right or wrong in the supposition that Senator James McClelland wrote Senator Murphy’s speech. If he did write it. ho doubt Senator Murphy will now be very upset with Senator James McClelland. Undoubtedly, whoever it was - whether it was Senator Murphy or some person purportedly assisting him - who wrote that speech the net result was that Senator Murphy made a fool of himself. He exposed himself to being shown to be a deceiver of the Australian public and a deceiver of the Senate because he did 2 things which no Attorney-General, no lawyer, : no senator and no citizen should do. He did 2 things which are unpardonable. He quoted out of context and he withheld information while purporting to disclose the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He withheld information which was both relevant and pertinent and which showed that the case he was putting did not exist in fact. These are things which Senator Murphy, if he did accept something which was written for him by somebody else, as Senator Young suggests, no doubt will wish to reconsider in due time in order to see what attitude he should adopt towards the person who put him in the position in which he now finds himself.
Senator James McClelland, in what I thought was a somewhat ineffective defence of the statement - we do not know whether he was defending himself or somebody else - said that Senator Greenwood was prepared to use hearsay because he was prepared to say in relation to the question of agents provocateurs that there was only hearsay evidence, but in relation to others, on similar evidence, he was prepared to make categorical statements. All I can say about that is that Senator James McClelland has shown that he neither read nor listened to the statement made by Senator Greenwood because 2 things are quite clear. The whole basis of Senator Greenwood’s statement was, firstly, that in relation to Croatian - alleged Croatian terrorism-
Government senators - Huh, huh!
– Members of the Labor Party say ‘Hub, huh’, showing their ass-like approach to this question. The whole approach of Senator Greenwood was twofold: Firstly, that in relation to alleged Croatian terrorism there was no viable or credible evidence to support a positive assertion, leading to prosecution and conviction, that such organisations for the purpose of terrorism existed in Australia. He went no further than that. He repeatedly said that there were reasons to believe and there were reasons to have cause to be concerned. He made all the other qualifications which are appropriate for an AttorneyGeneral. But what he did say was that in accordance with the advice given to him by ASIO, by the Commonwealth police, by his own Department and by any other Government agency to which reference has been made, there was not sufficient evidence to institute a prosecution.
That that was so is confirmed by the fact that Senator Murphy, in 4 months as AttorneyGeneral, has not instituted any prosecution on the evidence which was available to Senator Greenwood. This is something to which we must return continually in a consideration of this question. Senator Murphy has not launched any prosecution on the evidence which was available to Senator Greenwood.
The next point that Senator Greenwood made was that the reports available to him raised the question - no more than that - of the existence of agents provocateurs. Senator Greenwood was at pains to point out that he had no credible evidence to prove the existence of agents provocateurs. But what he did say was that there was no greater reason to believe that the bombings and the other actions to which reference had been made were the actions of so-called Croatian terrorists than that they were the actions of agents provocateurs. Senator James McClelland again misstated the facts to the Senate. He is not to be believed because he cannot read a statement and he cannot listen to it accurately.
Then Senator James McClelland went on to refer to what happened at Wodonga. Ten years ago there were meetings of the Citizen Military Forces at Wodonga. The CMF - that incredibly seditious organisation - apparently was acting in league with the Croatian nationalists! Senator Murphy has tabled photographs in the Senate, and I should like to refer very briefly to them. The documents are numbered ‘B7’. We find that one of them is a photograph of a number of gentlemen in their shorts and gym singlets, standing or sitting on the front of what was known a few years ago as a Bren gun carrier. Not being familiar with recent military terms, I am not quite sure what it is called today. One of the things in which I am interested is that we have not heard a single refutation of the allegation that the badge on the front of those singlets is the badge of Croatia - not the badge of the Ustasha. We have heard from Senator Mulvihill and from other people that this is apparently the badge of the Ustasha. I should like somebody to be able to say categorically and irrefutably that that is so, because at the moment we have an assertion that it is the badge of Croatia which was in existence more than 70 years ago.
We have also other photographs showing members of the Citizen Military Forces and members of the Croatian community, and what we find is that all these photographs - and I have not seen the film that Senator James McClelland was privileged to see, and some of the photographs no doubt have been taken from the film - show a group of people, but never in a training position in relation to weapons. We find that the police and ASIO reports - and I challenge Senator Murphy or any other Labor senator to deny this - show that the full investigation of this matter resulted in no evidence being found of any military training on the part of any of the Croatian or Yugoslav persons present at this holiday camp.
There was no evidence of any organisation behind the existence of the camp; there was no evidence of any terrorist activities behind the persons involved in the camp; but rather the evidence showed that there was an occasion when the CMF and the Croatian or Yugoslav nationalists, or former members of the peoples of those countries, joined together at a time when the photographs were taken. They were sitting on Bren gun carriers or on tanks holding weapons, all of which belonged to the CMF. Are members of the Labor Party prepared to make the charge that the Citizen Military Forces of this country acted in a way which was seditious or which involved them cooperating with a terrorist organisation? If they are prepared to make that charge, are they prepared to support it with evidence? I challenge Senator Murphy to support it from any documents which are available and, in part.ticular I ask him to refer to the particular report dealing with the investigation of those charges. In answer to a question asked of him by Senator Wriedt, Senator Greenwood said:
I can deny emphatically the suggestion that there was a training camp for terrorist purposes at Wodonga in 1963.
I challenge any Labor Party senator to produce convincing evidence to the contraryprovided he is prepared to undertake to produce the evidence, the whole evidence and nothing but the evidence. Let us proceed then to consider for a moment the further charges made by Senator James McClelland.
– They are not worth dealing with.
– Senator Webster has convinced me that the further charges made oy Senator James McClelland are not worth dealing with.
Debate interrupted.
page 856
– Order! In accordance with the resolution put down yesterday in the Senate, I put the question:
That the Senate do now adjourn.-.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Senate adjourned at 11 p.m.
Cite as: Australia, Senate, Debates, 4 April 1973, viewed 22 October 2017, <http://historichansard.net/senate/1973/19730404_senate_28_s55/>.